Dan Rather of “fake but accurate” infamy absurdly suggested in a Tuesday Facebook post that retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn’s talks with the Russians were at the same level as Watergate.
“On a 10 scale of Armageddon for our form of government, I would put Watergate at a 9,” Rather wrote. “This Russia scandal is currently somewhere around a 5 or 6, in my opinion, but it is cascading in intensity seemingly by the hour. And we may look back and see, in the end, that it is at least as big as Watergate. It may become the measure by which all future scandals are judged.”
This is ridiculous, especially since the Flynn controversy seems to be overblown. The Daily Wire listed seven Democratic foreign policy scandals that were all worse than what happened with Flynn, and here are seven more Democratic scandals that are worse than Flynn’s ouster.
1. The IRS scandal. Under Barack Obama’s presidency, the Internal Revenue Service unfairly targeted and scrutinized conservative Tea Party organizations receiving a tax-exempt status, going as far as asking a pro-life group the details of their prayers. It was essentially a suppression of free speech, and no one has really been held to account for it as the IRS targeting reportedly continues.
2. Operation Fast and Furious. The Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder conducted a gun-running operation to provide firearms to Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to undermine the Second Amendment. The consequences of the operation were deadly, as one of the guns involved in the program was used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman also received a firearm through Fast and Furious. The Obama administration continuously stonewalled efforts to investigate the operation and Holder was the first ever Attorney General to be held in contempt by the House of Representatives, although an activist federal court disagreed.
3. Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. The Daily Wire has previously explained:
As The Daily Wire has reported, it’s crystal-clear that Clinton violated the Espionage Act for having an unsecure, personal server that had over 1,340 classified emails on it. Clinton and her team actually removed the classified label on some of these emails to move them over to her private server. Not only is this an open-and-shut felony, she exposed highly-sensitive national security information to the country’s enemies, and it was all so she could put her position as Secretary of State up for sale through the Clinton Foundation.
4. The Department of Veteran’s Affairs scandal. In 2014, it was revealed that the VA had been putting veterans on secret wait lists where they were denied care, causing the VA to cook the books in order to receive bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the veterans placed on these lists would suffer and die. To this day, the VA is still in dire need of reform.
5. Whitewater. Rush Limbaugh gave a primer as to what exactly went on in the Whitewater scandal that came to the forefront during Bill Clinton’s presidency:
Whitewater, the Clintonsâ Whitewater scam with Jim McDougal and his wife, Susan, he was the money guy. The Clintons didnât have any money. It was a real estate scam where they bought development property, resort type property near bodies of water and so forth, Whitewater, in Arkansas. They built homes, they bought lots, and what they did, they aimed this development at seasoned citizens. It was not an old folksâ home. It was single-family homes that seasoned citizens, wealthy, moderately wealthy retirees could buy and live in, single family dwellings
The Clintons would cheat the seniors out of their down payments. If the buyer missed one mortgage payment, the Clintons repossessed the property and resold it, and they did this over and over and over. It was a scam designed to sell property to people who couldnât afford it. They got the down payment from them, and then, you know, of course when somethingâs financed, the finance company gives you the payment, and the person living in it makes monthly payments. So you sell a house, you get the money for it, from the bank or wherever. The person with the mortgage pays the bank back.
Well, the Clintons got the money, the McDougals got the money from whoever was financing it, and if these retirees missed â it was in the document â if you missed one mortgage payment, the thing was repossessed. They did this and they kept flipping these properties over and over. I mean, it was targeted to the seasoned citizen population. It was not just limited to them, but the people that ended up getting approval to buy property were people who it was suspected might not be able to make a payment at some point. And when they missed one, the Whitewater Development Corporation swept in there and repossessed the property and kicked out the old folks and resold the property. Thatâs essentially what Whitewater was.
The deal that sparked the scandal was the Castle Grande deal in 1986, when James McDougal, who ran Madison Guaranty Savings & Loans, was involved in a perplexing “pyramid scheme” that resulted in a loss of federal tax dollars, which was commonplace when it came to McDougal’s dealings.
Hillary Clinton at the time had Madison as a client at the Rose Law Firm, so there were questions about whether she and law partner Webster Hubbell had attempted to hide Madison’s shady dealings. After all, in 1985 McDougal hosted a fundraiser for Gov. Bill Clinton at Madison. Bill Clinton’s role revolved around his knowledge or lack of such in pressuring David Hale, a local judge, to give an illicit loan to Susan McDougal that had federal taxpayer backing in the Castle Grande deal.
As usual, the Clintons denied any involvement in the Castle Grande deal when it came under the public eye in the 1990s. Hillary Clinton herself didn’t produce billing records from the Rose Law Firm to Madison for two years despite the FBI’s request for them. Clinton later claimed she didn’t know they were in the White House and testified before a grand jury that she didn’t remember the extent of her involvement with Madison.
In the end, basically everyone involved in the Castle Grande deal faced indictments except for the Clintons. There were indictments drafted but they were never issued because “the evidence was circumstantialâand prosecutors felt they could get Clinton on the Monica Lewinsky scandal,” per the Daily Wire.
6. Monica Lewinsky. When people look back at the Clinton presidency, one of the first things that comes to mind is Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky. What people forget is that the issue underlying the scandal was the fact that Clinton was held in contempt of court for lying about the extent of his affair with Lewinsky during the Paula Jones lawsuit. Clinton also lost his law license for five years, was impeached, and had to pay $850,000 to Jones, who claimed Clinton sexually harassed her, in a case that was dismissed. In total, the Daily Wire‘s Amanda Prestigiacomo has found that there are at least 14 women who have accused Clinton of sexual abuse.
7. Chappaquiddick. The UK Daily Mail documented how Ted Kennedy was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick Island: (emphasis bolded)
A drunk Ted had been driving back from a party to the family ‘compound’ on Martha’s Vineyard when he veered off a bridge and into a deep tidal dyke.
Mary Jo was in the back seat and, while he claimed he was just giving her a lift back to her hotel, it was widely thought that he had picked her up for sex. Kennedy swam ashore to save himself, but left Mary Jo to drown – in fact, it was even worse than that.
It was nine hours before he reported the accident. In the meantime, he walked back to his motel, complained to the manager about a noisy party, took a shower, went to sleep, ordered newspapers when he woke up and spoke to a friend and two lawyers before finally calling the police.
Divers later estimated that if he had called them immediately, they would have had time to pull out Mary Jo. She had not drowned, but had survived in an air pocket inside the car – she was asphyxiated only when the oxygen ran out several hours later.
Kennedy only received “a slap on the wrist” for what he did. He claimed in his memoirs that he made “terrible decisions” during that night in Chappaquiddick, but Hot Air‘s Ed Morrissey has noted that Kennedy never really took responsibility for his actions and never showed much contrition about it.
Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter @bandlersbanter.
Source: The Daily Wire
