I often wonder if Democrats have really terrible memories or whether they wish you do. Oprah’s gal pal, Gayle King was interviewing Michelle Obama when she made the claim that her husband’s presidency was scandal-free. I have a terrible memory and I can remember quite a few, including at least three that included Hillary Clinton. But there were many others. Let us walk down memory lane and see how many we can recall.
Just two months after his inauguration, Hillary Clinton went to Russia and gifted her counterpart with a reset button just eight years before she blamed them for her election loss in 2016.
There was a problem with the reset button. It was supposed to say reset in English and Russian. She got the English part right, but the word in Russian was “peregruzka” which actually means overcharge.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov corrected Hillary and made the Americans look like buffoons. If it looks like a buffoon, walks like a buffoon, and talks like a buffoon, then it’s Hillary Clinton.
Now, let’s talk about Fast and Furious, (not to be mistaken for Ana Navarro’s Secret Service code name Fat and Furious). The idea was to sell guns to the cartels and then track them to see where they went. Selling the guns was successful, but they neglected to add the tracers to track the guns. One of those guns was used to kill Border Patrolman Brian Terry.
In another Obama administration “gun-walking” escapade, in February 2011 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, members of Los Zetasdrug gang ambushed two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Jaime Zapata, 32, was fatally shot and Victor Avila was wounded.
Fast and Furious guns have befouled at least 200 crime scenes, including murders and abductions. Among them:
• Members of La Familia drug gang fired at a Mexican federal police helicopter on May 24, 2011, wounding three officers and forcing an emergency landing in Michoacan, western Mexico. Five days later, four more helicopters attacked La Familia. Gang members returned fire, striking all four choppers and injuring two more government agents.
• Police prevailed, killing 11 cartel members and arresting 36 — including those suspected of targeting the first chopper. Mexican authorities say La Familia possessed heavyduty body armor and 70 rifles, including several Fast and Furious weapons.
• Two weapons purchased by Fast and Furious targets were recovered in Sonora July 2010, and to what the Justice Department classifies as a “homicide/ willful kill- gun.”
• Two Fast and Furious guns were linked to a February 2010 assassination conspiracy against Julian Leyzaola, then police chief in Baja, California.
• Four Fast and Furious guns found in January 2010 were connected to a “kidnap/ransom.”
• Eleven Fast and Furious firearms were discovered in Atoyac deAlvarez, a city on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, after Mexican soldiers saved a kidnap victimin November 2009.
Next on my list is Benghazi. Once again, Hillary was involved. Not only did she not beef up security after she was warned of an imminent attack, she actually cut security. As a result, the embassy was overrun by terrorists and our ambassador was killed along with three civilians who tried to defend against the attackers. Some might consider that a scandal.
Yes, Michelle, setting a good example is a part of the job but Obama was divisive as he delivered racially charged statements whenever possible. Because of his attentiveness to the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement gained a foothold in news coverage. Obama’s wingman, Attorney General Eric Holder attended Brown’s funeral on behalf of the administration. The White House sent three more officials to that funeral than they did to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral the year before. Priorities.
Scandals, there were a few. Speaking of guns, what about Operation Fast and Furious? The Obama Justice Department lost track of thousands of guns that were allowed into the hands of suspected smugglers, in the hope of tracing them to Mexican drug cartels. One of those guns was traced back to the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. What about the State Department emails and Hillary’s private email server in her home? There was the scandal of IRS Director Lois Lerner targeting conservatives for tax audits. Remember Benghazi? Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed in the attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya. Since it was close to the 2012 election, the press was happy to downplay the murder of an ambassador in order to help out their pal Barack in his re-election bid. Obama presided over the biggest data breach in the federal government’s history at the Office of Personnel Management. The personnel files of millions of federal employees were exposed. Last, but not least in a quick overview of some Obama-era scandals was the Veterans Affairs scandal that exposed more than 40 deaths of veterans who died waiting for appointments.
