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-- Hillary Clinton buries major staffer's DWI 2 days before New Hampshire


Posted by Groundhog Boy on Jan-13-2008 04:16:

Hillary Clinton buries major staffer's DWI 2 days before New Hampshire

quote:
Sidney Blumenthal plays hardball. A longtime confidante and adviser to the Clintons, he has zealously defended them through any number of scandal investigations. Along the way, Blumenthal has shown an affinity for the sharp counterattack. When a group of Arkansas state troopers in the early 1990s began leveling charges that Bill Clinton had strayed in his marriage, Blumenthal shot back--penning an article in The New Yorker accusing the troopers of a litany of their own transgressions, including attempted fraud, marital infidelity and drunken driving.

Now, Blumenthal himself faces charges of driving drunk. Blumenthal, an unpaid senior adviser to Hillary Clinton�s presidential campaign, was arrested in Nashua on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and charged with aggravated DWI, according two members of the Nashua police force.

Sgt. Mike Masella, one of the arresting officers, said the movements of a Buick caught his eye. �I observed all his erratic driving,� Masella said. �When I first noticed him it was at an intersection. He abruptly stopped. That caught my eye � He was drifting in his lane.� Masella followed the car, a rental, for a mile and a half, and clocked its speed at 70mph in a 30mph zone--more than twice the legal limit. Masella pulled the car over at 12:30 a.m. Monday morning. Blumenthal told the officer he was returning to his hotel from a restaurant in Manchester. After declining to take a Breathalyzer, Masella says, Blumenthal failed a field sobriety test. Blumenthal was handcuffed, booked, had his fingerprints taken and was held for four hours--standard operating procedure in such arrests in New Hampshire--before posting bail and being released. (He will be arraigned later this month.) Because the car was moving at excessive speeds, Blumenthal was given the more serious charge of �aggravated� DWI--which carries a mandatory sentence of at least three days behind bars. �He�s charged with a serious crime,� says Nashua Police Capt. Peter Segal, who will oversee the case as it moves toward a court date.

Ray Mello, a New Hampshire attorney, says he is representing Blumenthal and will explore �all of the avenues of discovery.�

�In reality, it�s a traffic violation,� Mello said, noting that the more serious �aggravated� DWI charge is due to the alleged speeding, not �degree of intoxication.� When asked if Blumenthal was driving drunk, Mello said, �He�s going to pursue all legal defenses in court, and we�re going to deal with the case in court and not in the media.� (The Clinton campaign declined comment on the arrest and whether it would affect Blumenthal's status as an adviser.)

Blumenthal�s attorney could, of course, work out a plea agreement with prosecutors and spare his client jail time. Masella said that Blumenthal, a journalist and author currently working as a senior fellow for the New York University Center on Law and Security, was a gracious arrestee. �I asked if he was here with a campaign. He said he was here with Clinton," Masella said. �Other than that we certainly suspected him of DWI, he was a perfect gentleman."
http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/...n-the-boil.aspx

Does someone want to explain to me how this happened Sunday night/Monday moring, the New Hampshire primary was on Tuesday, and this doesn't get discovered until the weekend? I think we all know why this wasn't discovered faster...

They could have made her cry over that, too....


Posted by Arbiter on Jan-13-2008 06:16:

Good.


Posted by josh4 on Jan-13-2008 10:54:

Re: Hillary Clinton buries major staffer's DWI 2 days before New Hampshire

quote:
Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
Does someone want to explain to me how this happened Sunday night/Monday moring, the New Hampshire primary was on Tuesday, and this doesn't get discovered until the weekend? I think we all know why this wasn't discovered faster...

They could have made her cry over that, too....


There was no mention of that in the article. Are we concocting our own conspiracies now?


Posted by Lebezniatnikov on Jan-13-2008 15:42:

I don't think a candidate can really be taken to task for an indiscretion (however major) by an advisor. That's like saying that any boss is personally responsible for the actions of every employee in their free time.


Posted by MisterOpus1 on Jan-13-2008 16:32:

As much as I dislike Hillary and Sid Vicious, having one of her staffers have a DWI the night before the election really isn't much of a story, especially with some indirect thought that it may have changed the outcome of NH. Not much of a story here, IMO.


Posted by Groundhog Boy on Jan-13-2008 18:17:

quote:
Originally posted by MisterOpus1
As much as I dislike Hillary and Sid Vicious, having one of her staffers have a DWI the night before the election really isn't much of a story, especially with some indirect thought that it may have changed the outcome of NH. Not much of a story here, IMO.

The DWI isn't the story for me at all. Seriously, does no one else think it's an awfully coincidental that this wasn't reported for a week and conveniently after the election?


Posted by MisterOpus1 on Jan-13-2008 19:07:

quote:
Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
The DWI isn't the story for me at all. Seriously, does no one else think it's an awfully coincidental that this wasn't reported for a week and conveniently after the election?


I guess to me if it really was more newsworthy it would have been reported earlier, but that's just my own opinion on the matter. I know what you're getting at about our mainstream media padding certain folks they tend to like more, but that hardly can be said about Hillary with the media. One need only listen to Faux News or the slurs by Matthews on MSNBC to see that.


Posted by Groundhog Boy on Jan-13-2008 23:21:

quote:
Originally posted by MisterOpus1
I guess to me if it really was more newsworthy it would have been reported earlier, but that's just my own opinion on the matter. I know what you're getting at about our mainstream media padding certain folks they tend to like more, but that hardly can be said about Hillary with the media. One need only listen to Faux News or the slurs by Matthews on MSNBC to see that.

I'm not really thinking that any of the media knew. Otherwise, like you said, Fox would have been on it. I'm thinking more along the lines of convincing the police not to report it, which doesn't just happen at random.

In most local papers, they report all of the DUIs in the police report section right after they happen. If some B-list celebrity gets busted, we hear about it the next day all over the MSM, with mug shots.

I just find it impossible that this story randomly took a week to get out.


Posted by MisterOpus1 on Jan-14-2008 02:27:

quote:
Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
I'm not really thinking that any of the media knew. Otherwise, like you said, Fox would have been on it. I'm thinking more along the lines of convincing the police not to report it, which doesn't just happen at random.

In most local papers, they report all of the DUIs in the police report section right after they happen. If some B-list celebrity gets busted, we hear about it the next day all over the MSM, with mug shots.

I just find it impossible that this story randomly took a week to get out.


Fair enough.



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