George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley skewered former First Lady Hillary Clinton Thursday for attacking former President Donald Trump over the alleged payout to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Clinton appeared on Morning Joe, where she alleged that the $130,000 payout to Daniels in 2016 was a form of “election interference” by the Trump campaign while discussing Trump’s trial on a 34-count indictment secured by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee agreed to pay a $113,000 fine after failing to report funding of the now-debunked Steele dossier through the Perkins Coie law firm.
“They are saying you rigged an election or a race that was already run, that’s what doesn’t make sense to us,” Turley said. “The hilarious aspect of that earlier clip with Hillary Clinton is that she actually makes the case for Trump, because when she ‘says how dare you keep information from the public,’ The Clinton campaign lied to the media about funding the Steele dossier. How did they hide it? They said it was legal expenses with Marc Elias. And when they were facing a fine, they litigated that and said no, it really is a legal expense. So her campaign did exactly what she is suggesting here, but they did it before the election.”
The Steele dossier was a key source behind the FBI’s investigation into allegations that the Trump campaign engaged in election interference with Russia in 2016. In October 2016, the FBI offered the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele, $1 million to corroborate allegations made in the document, according to testimony by FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten.
Steele ultimately failed to “prove the allegations,” Auten testified.
“What Trump is being accused of is giving the wrong notation, which he may not have had anything to do with, after the election was over that somehow affected the election,” Turley said. “The fact that judge Juan Merchan has allowed this case to go forward on these conflicted elements of the theory is one of the biggest complaints I have against him, that most judges, I think, would have approached this case very differently and many would not have had this case go to trial.” (The Daily Caller, 5/10/2024) (Archive)