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To those of us who have followed the ongoing Clinton Saga, which now reaches back almost 25 years, Hillary Rodham Clinton's computer server promises to become as historic as Monica Lewinsky's stained dress. That is to say, that her server may indeed become as significant to her presidential prospects as Lewinsky's dress was to Bill Clinton's prospects for impeachment.
It is now apparent to fact-finders across the nation that some of Hillary Clinton's emails — thousands of which have been saved on her personal server — show that she lied to the American people as surely as Monica's dress proved that her husband lied to the American people and to the grand jury when he denied having sex "with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Would it not be fitting that at the end of the Clinton Saga a dusty old server and a tired old dress go on display in the penultimate room of "The Clinton Museum and Souvenir Shop" down in jerkwater? Beyond that room comes the basement, featuring the words "They Lied to Us."
What the server's emails indicate is that on the night that four Americans were murdered in Benghazi, Hillary Clinton emailed the truth of how they died to her daughter. She told Chelsea Clinto that the Americans were the victims of an organized terrorist attack. She later admitted that to the Egyptian prime minister also. Nonetheless she signed a public statement from the State Department proclaiming that the Americans were the victims of a riot provoked by a YouTube video. After lying to the American people the evening of the attack, she repeated the lie to the victims' relatives when their bodies were flown in to Joint Base Andrews. Moreover she stood by her false account when she testified to the House Select Committee.
There are other untruths that have been passed on from Hillary Clinton's server. She has lied about arranging lecture fees from her State Department office for the gifted Bill Clinton. There are lies about arranging donations for her family foundation, her forthcoming political campaign, and her own speaking fees. There are lies on the topic of influence pedaling and on whom she kept in contact with. It must rankle President Barack Obama that she communicated with Sidney Blumenthal from her office after the president specifically asked that she not. And of course there are questions about what manner of classified information she kept on her personal server. This is being scrutinized even now by the FBI. In point of fact, Clinton's server may become even more historic than Lewinsky's dress.
As a veritable scholar of the Clinton Saga, I remember entertaining inquiries from doubters on national television, for instance James Carville and the earnest Paul Begala. They wanted to know why in a controversy over the Clintons' Whitewater dealings Independent Counsel Ken Starr was pursuing the president on questions so marginal as his sexual adventures with la Lewinsky. Well, I had answered that the Clintons were part of the Liberal camorra that had raised thitherto harmless sexual advances to the level of a criminal offense. Surely the Clintons were as answerable to these new laws as the rest of us. I never had the opportunity to spurn the ravenous advances of an overheated intern, but Bill Clinton did and he allowed Lewinsky to ill-use him. For Starr, that was easier to prove than allegations about a second-rate real estate deal.
One sure way to prove that Bill or Hillary Clinton has lied is to subject their lies to the incontrovertible examinations of a DNA test or to the disinterested workings of modern engineering. Bill Clinton, when pressed, could babble on for years with learned hypotheticals about the meaning of "is" or "was" or "oral sex." He actually argued that oral sex was not sex. So Starr was forced to bring in the DNA experts, and hesto presto: He lied. Now we shall have to bring in the contents of Hillary Clinton's server. It will prove she lied on a wider range of topics than mere sex with a hot-blooded intern.
The only question is will the Republicans running for the presidency have the fortitude to ask the tough questions. Last weekend, Donald Trump hinted menacingly that he does. Will the others? They should fill the airwaves with such questions about Benghazi, influence pedaling, $500,000 speeches, campaign finances, and forget not that uranium concession to the Russians.
Remember what I said in one of my scholarly disquisitions published years ago at the beginning of this historic saga: "The Clintons lie when they do not have to lie, and they tell a gaudy whopper when a little white lie would be perfectly satisfactory." Pursue the lies, you who seek the highest office in the land. The majority of the American people already believe Hillary Clinton is a liar and untrustworthy. As to Lewi sky's old blue dress? I think they have forgotten.
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R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a political and cultural monthly, which has been published since 1967. He's also the author of several books.
