There are lots of salacious details in the lawsuit alleging Prince Andrew and legal giant Alan Dershowitz engaged in sex with underaged prostitutes. But Fox’s Megyn Kelly and Chris Stirewalt ignored Fox’s own reporting that found no evidence that Clinton was involved in order to suggest otherwise.
The case involves the sexual improprieties of one Jeffrey Epstein, a business tycoon who once had friends in high places.
From The NY Times:
The motion filed in United States District Court in the Southern District of Florida alleges that Mr. Epstein forced a teenage girl to have sexual relations with several men, including Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s second son, and Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Both men have denied the allegations.
But the only aspect of the case that firmly engaged the attention of “straight news anchor” Kelly was Epstein’s long-severed connection to Bill Clinton.
Kelly’s introduction to the first of three segments on last night’s Kelly File:
Lots of attention being paid today to some shocking allegations of underage prostitution involving a member of the royal family, Prince Andrew, and famed Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz. And while the claims made against those men are disturbing enough, the story really started getting some attention when news outlets like The Drudge Report pointed out that former president Bill Clinton has been accused of being friendly with the man who allegedly procured these underage prostitutes.
Reporter Trace Gallagher provided a rundown of the case in which he deliberately – and baselessly – cast suspicion on Clinton:
Former President Bill Clinton is not named in the new motion but in court documents filed in Palm Beach Circuit Court, Clinton is again linked to his old friend from back in the early 2000s. The records say the former president flew several times on Epstein’s plane to his private island estate where underage sex parties were allegedly happening. There is no evidence linking the former president with any of those events but Epstein’s personal computer records also show the former president’s email address along with 21 of his phone numbers. After Epstein was convicted in 2008, Bill Clinton apparently cut all ties to him but now brand new questions about the relationship are again being raised.
Of course, nobody raised questions about Donald Trump’s friendship with “terrific guy” Epstein.
Next, Fox’s Judge Andrew Napolitano explained the legal issues involved, none of which involved Clinton.
However, Kelly made sure to keep Clinton in the picture anyway. She asked, “There’s a question about whether (Prince Andrew) could be forced or Bill Clinton could be forced or even Alan Dershowitz ...could any of these men be forced to give a deposition?”
“Probably,” Napolitano said, “if the lawsuit moves forward.” However, he also said, “This is not about the private life of Prince Andrew or Bill Clinton or Professor Dershowitz. This is about a government doing a favor for an admitted pedophile because of who his friends are and doing it in a way that violated its own laws and its own rules and the statutes that it’s sworn to uphold.”
And what government was that? Napolitano revealed, “This is Bush’s Justice Department doing this and we don’t know why."
Kelly called the revelation “stunning.” But not so stunning that she wanted to follow up on the Bush angle. Not the way she obsessed on the phony allegations that the Obama Justice Department decided against charging an African American with voter intimidation (even though no voter intimidation had occurred) because of racial preference.
Instead, Kelly doubled down on the non-existent Clinton angle. Her next guest, Fox’s “digital politics editor,” Chris Stirewalt was there to help.
KELLY: The criminal charges are just one part of this story. The other consideration is how, if at all, this focuses unflattering attention on former President Bill Clinton, who is the husband of course of the presumed 2016 Democratic frontrunner.
Kelly asked Stirewalt, “Does it affect that race at all?”
Stirewalt cagily answered the question to suggest that it would – without actually saying so – while smearing Bill Clinton anyway.
STIREWALT: Bill Clinton’s libido affects Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, period. His history affects her candidacy, period. Because it’s the thing that he’s most famous for. He got impeached over his trysts... (Stirewalt digressed to note that Rand Paul called Clinton “a sexual predator”) …Whether there is any truth to any of these allegations or not, the desire for the tabloid press to go after 'Bill Clinton is a horndog' headlines. Any time that they can get anywhere near that, they are gonna go all over that. And every time a picture surfaces of Bill Clinton with somebody who looks like she might be in the adult entertainment industry, those are going to go on the front page, too.
In other words, Fox has nothing on Clinton other than titillating, unfounded supposition but that’s no reason not to pretend otherwise.
Watch the two segments below, from last night’s The Kelly File.