Senator Clinton's Lawyers Seek to Halt Fraud Suit

Senator Clinton's Lawyers Seek to Halt Fraud Suit By Fred Lucas CNSNews.com Staff Writer March 27, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Attorneys for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) are trying to keep her out of a lawsuit that may ultimately force her to testify under oath about an alleged violation of campaign finance laws.

Washington lawyers David Kendall and Carolyn Utrecht and Los Angeles attorney Jan B. Norman -- all representing the apparent frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination -- filed legal briefs Friday in the California Court of Appeals focusing heavily on the criminal background of plaintiff Peter Paul, the Hollywood businessman who is suing both Bill and Hillary Clinton and others.

Hillary’s Nemesis - Peter Paul
The Fraudulent Senator: Part 2 of a 7 Part Series
Joan Swirsky
March 14, 2006
Peter Paul is a lot like Paula Jones, the young Arkansas housewife whose sexual-harassment lawsuit resulted in President Clinton’s impeachment, disbarment, a mountain of “go away” money, and eternal ignominy.

But while Mrs. Jones was the arch female version of little David successfully vanquishing the Goliath of a sitting president, Mr. Paul – a successful international lawyer, businessman, power player and Goliath in his own right – is now taking on the former president and his wife Hillary in what is being called the largest campaign-finance fraud case in the history of the United States.

But who is Peter Paul? To listen to Hillary’s see-no-evil supporters and listen to their old media echo chamber – all of whom are intent on discrediting Mr. Paul and his Detective Javert-like pursuit of New York’s junior senator – is to believe that Mr. Paul is solely distinguished by his ethical and legal lapses, specifically two convictions and confession of securities violations. It is also to stretch one’s imagination to believe that his target is both ethically and legally above reproach.

As it turns out, the playing field of these antagonists is quite level (see Part I of this series, “The Fraudulent Senator – The Scandal Queen”).

So it’s not a matter of who has kept the rather intimate company of crooks, is familiar with criminal charges or is more corrupt. Rather it is who will succeed: Hillary in getting the suit against her dismissed or Mr. Paul in winning it and effectively quashing The Scandal Queen’s aspirations for a presidential run in 2008.

Not-So-Humble Beginnings
Like Hillary, Mr. Paul, now 57 and the father of four, grew up in comfort, the only child of an international lawyer and a mother whose early residence was on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, not far from the tony abode of the Kennedy clan. At the age of 12, the Florida native founded “Americans Seeking Knowledge” (ASK), which dealt with documents and manuscripts that he obtained from existing archives and by corresponding with world leaders.

During his high school years, beginning in 1963, Mr. Paul spent his summers as an exchange student in Chile, Peru and Argentina where his unlikely “but indelibly memorable” experiences – he told me in a lengthy telephone interview and numerous e-mail exchanges – included befriending Chile’s president, President Jorge Allessandri Rodriques, who walked alongside young Peter on his daily jaunt to the presidential office. In Lima, Peru, he met a young German girl who invited him to visit her grandfather in an opulent compound deep in the Peruvian jungle. “I was shocked,” said Mr. Paul, “to learn that he was the infamous Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller.”

When he returned to the U.S. in 1964, Mr. Paul began his life of political activism by becoming the youngest precinct captain in the presidential campaign of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who he had met in the White House two years before. “But my political consciousness was not fully developed until I entered Dartmouth College and my Chinese history teacher, professor Jonathan Mirsky, convinced me to leave the NROTC (the “n” stands for naval) program I was in and oppose the Vietnam War,” which led him to join Bennington College students in the first anti-war march down Fifth Avenue in New York and also to lead the civil rights movement at Dartmouth.

But when he was kicked out of the then-boys-only school for living off-campus with a girl, Mr. Paul went to England to join Bertrand Russell’s Peace Foundation as director of the Stop-the-Draft arm of the famous philosopher's global peace initiative, at the same time taking classes at the London School of Economics. After being persuaded by his parents to return to the U.S. and join his father's international law practice, Mr. Paul earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Miami, after which, in 1973, he obtained a certificate from The Academy of International Law in The Hague, Netherlands.

Mr. Paul – alluding to his current quest “to expose Hillary’s corruption” – cited the Mueller case as his “first whistle-blowing venture.” While a student in The Hague and attending a reception for Peace Palace students given by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, Mr. Paul sat next to a German war-crimes prosecutor and told him where Mueller could be found. The prosecutor promised to bring the information to the attention of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal but never did. In 2001, the Los-Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center acknowledged that the former Nazi had never been found but concluded that he was “no longer alive.”

On his return from the Netherlands, Mr. Paul quickly developed a leading role as an international lawyer in Miami, developing trade and commerce through powerful political clients in South America. He also became the protégé of the founder of the World Trade Center's Association in New York, Guy Tozzoli – the man who conceived the idea of the Twin Towers and arranged for them to be built, Mr. Paul said, with Port Authority of NY and NJ funds to benefit David Rockefeller's land portfolio.

In short order, Mr. Tozzoli granted Mr. Paul the World Trade Center rights for Miami, Venezuela and Peru, which he used to develop an office tower – designed by world-famous architect I.M. Pei – and which today is a Miami landmark. He was also granted the exclusive rights to own and operate the largest foreign trade zone in the United States by the U.S. Department of Commerce – the Miami Free Zone.

Adding to his burgeoning reputation as a force to be reckoned with, Mr. Paul said that when he began practicing corporate law, “I moved to the right for pragmatic reasons,” when I started to represent the presidents and governments of Peru, Nicaragua, Haiti, Panama and the Andean Pact, along with wealthy industrialists and landowners from those regions.” He also represented surrealist painter Salvador Dali and American pop artist Andy Warhol, among other luminaries.

Throughout the 1970s to the mid-‘80s, Mr. Paul was involved in various ventures, both legitimate and illegitimate – from working with undercover government operatives on an anti-Castro sting to getting indicted and serving prison time. But upon his release from prison in 1985, he turned his sights on Tinseltown.

Going Hollywood
It was in LaLa Land itself that, in 1991, Mr. Paul was invited to a small gathering of influential decision-makers to meet Bill Clinton who was trying to determine the support he would get from Hollywood for his intended presidential candidacy.

“Clinton's glibness couldn’t camouflage the hollow opportunism that betrayed the lack of committed ideology on his part,” Mr. Paul remarked. "I was underwhelmed and decided not to join the Show Coalition’s political action committee that Patricia Duff [then-wife of Mike Medavoy, chairman of TriStar Pictures] and others were putting together.”

But the fatal attractions of power and money eventually brought Mr. Paul and Mr. Clinton together. In 1994, after a private meeting with co-presidents Bill and Hillary, Mr. Paul conducted the first-ever book signing in the White House, where one of the media icons he represented, Fabio – the beefcake pin-up who sold more than four million books in nine languages in 23 countries – signed books and calendars for 100 White House staffers and posed with none other than the co-president herself.

When Mr. Paul met Fabio in 1991, the muscle-bound Italian was living in his friend’s spare room and bereft of both job and income. But “seeing potential” in the former photographer’s model, Mr. Paul invented Fabio’s babe-magnet persona, gave him his solitary name, and single-handedly elevated him from obscurity to being featured on the cover of People magazine and having Cosmopolitan declare him “the sexiest man in the world.” And although Fabio couldn’t speak English, Mr. Paul also obtained the services of Robert Gottlieb, the prestigious literary agent (who also represents Tom Clancy) to be Fabio’s agent, which resulted in a string of best-selling books of which, Mr. Paul said, “the `author’ never wrote a single word.”

In 1994, Mr. Paul managed to convince the Italian-American Foundation in Washington, D.C. to honor Fabio, along with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and actor Danny DeVito – with Hillary and Bill in attendance.”

“At my urging,” Mr. Paul admitted, “Fabio chased Hillary around a conference table after the award dinner. Bill was yelling, `Hillary, don’t be a prude,’ but she sat down on the floor in her gown because she didn’t want to be embarrassed by her weight when Fabio engaged in his signature activity – swooping women up in his arms. But Fabio’s strength was legendary and he finally scooped Hillary off the floor, with the White House photographer snapping away. The pictures, Mr. Paul said, “have never seen the light of day.”

Ultimately, Fabio was accused of increasingly misogynistic behavior and Mr. Paul sold him back his contract.

The following year, in 1995, Mr. Paul reported, Bill Clinton attended the same award dinner alone and remarked in his opening statement: "Hillary could not join me this year, but she has never been the same since Fabio picked her up here last year."

Then, in 1998, Mr. Paul became a partner of Stan Lee (who created Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and The X-Men for Marvel Comics) and the two of them founded Stan Lee Media (SLM), with Mr. Lee as chairman.

SLM became the foremost Internet animation and superhero-creation studio in Hollywood, going public in 1999 and growing to a market cap of more than $370 million within six months as a result of the dot.com boom. In 2000, the company won the Web Award for best entertainment portal. The company teamed up with the Backstreet Boys to create alter-ego superhero characters of the young singers, producing the largest off-line promotion of an Internet property in history with Burger King for its Back to School promotion.

Mr. Paul and Mr. Lee raised $10 million from Macromedia Inc. and Venture Soft Inc. of Japan, ultimately acquiring ownership of all intellectual property rights to Conan the Barbarian and negotiating a $200-million picture deal with the Matrix' Warshovsky brothers to reinvigorate the franchise that had made a star of then-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Michael Jackson even joined with the two men in an effort to buy Marvel Entertainment, but the deal never materialized.

With Mr. Paul's net worth bolstered by more than $70 million in stock value from his founder's interest in SLM, it was not long before he was approached by one of his former employees, Aaron Tonken, to become a major contributor to the Democratic Party. The objective was to develop a relationship with Mr. Clinton by sponsoring fundraising events, and ultimately to have Mr. Clinton – after he departed the White House in January 2001 – promote Mr. Paul's public company in the same way that many ex-presidents become "rainmakers" in the private sector.

According to Mr. Paul, Mr. Tonken – who is now serving a 63-month sentence for mail and wire fraud – wanted to show off his close relationship with Mr. Clinton and then-DNC Chairman Ed Rendell by co-hosting a DNC fundraising dinner – featuring the president – in February 2000. Mr. Paul contributed $30,000 to co-host the event with music tycoon Babyface Edmunds, and met with Mr. Clinton. He was also befriended by Mr. Rendell, who, he said, “seemed as interested in befriending my blonde wife as he did in getting into my checkbook.”

Throughout March and April 2000, Mr. Paul said, Mr. Rendell visited him regularly at his home and office. When the DNC was preparing to have President Clinton visit Mr. Paul's home in Calabassas to spend the night there and attend the fundraising event, Mr. Paul went all out, making more than $150,000 in enhancements to his 13,000-square-foot, five-acre estate in Los Angeles’ horse country.

But Mr. Rendell had other plans. Abruptly changing course, he convinced Mr. Paul to host Al Gore's first major Hollywood fund raiser and a VIP fundraising luncheon and tea for Hillary Clinton – with the events scheduled for June 8 and 9, 2000.

Thus began Mr. Paul’s series of fundraising activities for the DNC and the Hillary Clinton Senate campaign, first orchestrated, he said, by Mr. Rendell and supported and encouraged by DNC-Chairman Terry McAuliffe (with the counsel of Harold Ickes) and then by Hillary herself.

Entering the Clinton Web
In July 2000, President Clinton, (according to court testimony in the Rosen case) sent his close friend, Jim Levin, who he had designated as his personal liaison, to negotiate his employment offer from Peter Paul. That deal has been described in Mr. Paul's civil suit as a one-year contract to work with Stan Lee Media after the president left office for the very orange carrot of $10 million in stock, $5 million in cash, and a $1 million donation to the president's foundation. To seal the deal, so to speak, Mr. Clinton asked Mr. Paul to produce and underwrite a major fundraising event for Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign.

Mr. Paul agreed. But before the fundraising event took place, he met with Hillary on several occasions, even hosting (and paying for) a VIP luncheon at Spago as well as arranging a tea in a private residence that Hillary and 150 other people attended, including Larry King, Melanie Griffith, Morgan Fairchild, et al.

“I sat for hours laughing and talking with Hillary at both the luncheon and tea,” Mr. Paul said. “In fact, at the luncheon both my wife Andrea and I gave Hillary $2,000 each for her senate campaign. I told her about my past as an international lawyer in Miami and my anti-Castro activities, and she seemed well aware of them. She smiled and nodded in recognition and said that, yes, I had had a 'colorful' past. She even allowed me to videotape almost 40 minutes of our two-hour personal conversation.”

Borrowing language from Hollywood relationship experts, Mr. Paul said that he “bonded with Hillary at that luncheon, especially when I discovered that we shared experiences at Winter Carnival at Dartmouth College in 1967 when Hillary had a blind date with a friend of mine from California.” He mentioned these facts when he introduced Hillary at the tea, in remarks that were videotaped and on which Hillary is captured laughingly admonishing Mr. Paul to “not tell them everything”

In fact, Mr. Paul said, “most of our discussion focused on the fundraising event and also on the Amazon roses I had sent her every Valentine's Day since the mid-‘90s to get her to release the photo of Fabio holding her at the Italian-American awards dinner. She told me that, yes, she would give me the photo if I helped her campaign!”

In August 2000, Mr. Paul said, “My good faith advance on Bill Clinton's post-White House employment came to pass.” Just days before the Democratic Convention, his $1.9 million gala extravaganza to benefit Hillary’s senate campaign took place. The invitation-only private concert and dinner – $1,000 a seat; $25,000 per couple – was billed as "The Hollywood Farewell Gala Salute to President William Jefferson Clinton" and featured singing stars like Cher, Diana Ross, Patti LaBelle, Melissa Etheridge, Paul Anka, et al; a raft of A-list Hollywood celebrities; the leadership of the DNC, and the co-presidents and their daughter Chelsea.

"The event raked in over $1 million for Hillary’s senate run," Mr. Paul said.

Now how on earth did Mr. Paul, with his “colorful” and controversial past, which included felony convictions, ever get to spend "face time" with the Clintons in the first place? After all, before anyone can get up-close and personal with a sitting president of the United States and his wife, he or she must undergo a rigorous political and security-risk vetting process by the Secret Service, the White House and the Democratic National Committee.

Clearly, Mr. Paul passed muster. “I had already hosted a DNC dinner for the president, a major Hollywood fundraiser for Vice President Gore, a VIP luncheon and fundraising tea for Hillary, and my name was approved to appear with the name of the Governor of California as a co-host of the biggest fundraising event ever, with more than 20,000 invitations mailed and hand-delivered throughout Hollywood,” Mr. Paul said. “All of these events were thoroughly vetted so I was confident that the negative things in my past, which had been blared from the media since 1982, were no obstacle to my business objectives with the Clintons.”

In fact, he continued, “My wife and I sat with the Clintons for hours during the reception before the big gala, throughout the entire gala itself, and at the VIP dinner that followed it, from 8:15 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. We also spent time with Chelsea, Hillary and Bill at the brunch Barbra Streisand hosted at her home the following day for million-dollar presidential library donors. We were convinced that we had forged a special relationship with the first family, one that would survive any bad publicity – especially after Chelsea related to me the conversation her parents had the night before regarding how excited they were about working with me and Stan Lee in Hollywood after they left the White House.”

A Knife in the Back
But two days after the gala, The Washington Post ran the first of two articles that challenged Hillary as being soft on crime because of her relationship with Mr. Paul, who the Post uncovered as an ex-felon from the 1970s.

“That was when vintage Team Clinton did what they’re famous for,” Mr. Paul said. “They developed complete amnesia about the several meetings and encounters we had had and pretended they didn’t know me!”

In the Post article, Hillary's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, denied that Hillary had taken any donations from Mr. Paul and vowed that Hillary would not be taking any contributions from him in the future.

Two days later, in a lengthy follow-up article in the Post, under a photo of Mr. Paul with President Reagan, Mr. Wolfson was forced to admit that Hillary had in fact taken $2,000 from him, "but…we are sending that back to Mr. Paul."

In the article, Mr. Wolfson (and therefore, Hillary, according to Mr. Paul) acknowledged that the gala cost "$1 million plus," which Mr. Wolfson described as an "in kind" contribution to Hillary's campaign. An "in kind" contribution is a gift of goods or services rather than a check made out to the campaign.

“Wolfson clearly did not understand,” said Mr. Paul, “that as far as Federal Election Commission (FEC) reporting is concerned, an `in kind’ contribution is treated identically with a cash contribution for reporting purposes.”

To Mr. Paul, "poetic justice" arrived in his mail a few days after the second Post story ran on August 17, 2000: a letter from Hillary dated August 18, 2000, on her personal stationary. The letter thanked Mr. Paul for hosting the fundraising gala, expressed gratitude for their friendship, and stated that she would always remember him. On the same day, Bill Clinton wrote a handwritten letter to Mr. Paul, thanking him for the event and “the boost” it had given to Hillary’s campaign.

To an unwitting public who were getting their information directly from a media besotted by the co-presidents, it appeared that the whole "misunderstanding" had been resolved and that Hillary’s restitution and disavowal of Mr. Paul had redeemed her – and also that Peter Paul was toast.

Shameless Greed
But on August 24, 2000, a mere week after Hillary’s slam appeared in print, Mr. Paul received a fax – on a Hillary Clinton for Senate letterhead – from David Rosen, the national finance director of Hillary’s senatorial campaign. And guess what he wanted from the man who Hillary had claimed not to have met and vowed never to take a contribution from? In a request that defines the word chutzpah, he wanted Mr. Paul to contribute an additional hundred thousand dollars to Hillary’s campaign!

Now Mr. Paul – in spite of his worldliness and familiarity with the high and mighty – was not above being besotted himself by his access to the leader of the Free World. He told Mr. Rosen that Hillary would not get a cent more from him unless he arranged a personal meeting with the president, the better to gain assurances that their deal – i.e., the rainmaker arrangement – was still going forward. He told Mr. Rosen that Mr. Clinton would have to convince him personally to contribute more money to Hillary’s campaign.

Apparently, money does talk! On September 22, 2000, none other than Hillary herself arranged for Mr. Paul, accompanied by then-California Governor Gray Davis, to meet with President Clinton on his arrival in Los Angeles – aboard Air Force One!

"The president turned up the charm," Mr. Paul reported, saying that, "despite Hillary’s public rebuke of me and her returning the $2,000, we – he and I – still had a deal. He allowed me to make another video message in which he thanked me for the gala and recorded a personal message to my wife, who was about to give birth to our son.” Dazzled, Mr. Paul contributed $55,000 to Hillary’s campaign.

Mr. Paul was lucky. Instead of meeting the same dire end as dozens of other Clinton cronies have over the decades, he escaped with just being fleeced. In return for his largesse, Mr. Paul is claiming in his civil fraud suit against the Clintons that they robbed him not only of the money he laid out for Hillary’s senate campaign but also of his business!

Reversals and Revenge
While dealing with his own devolving fortunes – both financial and legal – Mr. Paul was perusing his paperwork and the Internet when he discovered something he called “astounding.” It was that in two separate filings to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Hillary Clinton had hidden his $1.5 million-plus contributions to her campaign!”

Aggrieved and outraged but clearly less intimidated than most by the “Clinton machine” – and its reputation for destroying the lives and careers of those who have gone against it – a dogged Mr. Paul began blowing the whistle against the Clinton campaign finance fraud. In March 2001, he presented all of his evidence to Justice Department attorneys. In June 2001, he filed a civil suit and an FEC complaint and also gave an exclusive interview to ABC’s “20/20 in July, 2001, publicly presenting his allegations of various Clinton frauds and misconduct.

In October 2004, the California Supreme Court upheld Mr. Paul’s civil suit, which denied Clinton appeals to dismiss the first-ever fraud and coercion suit brought against a U.S. President and a U.S. Senator.

In May 2005, David Rosen, Hillary’s national finance director, was prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Public Integrity for three counts of election fraud, but ultimately acquitted. Judge A. Howard Matz – a Clinton appointee to the bench – presided on the Rosen case.

Incredibly, before the trial even began or before any evidence had been presented, Judge Matz pronounced to the media that Mr. Paul was a "thoroughly corrupt and discredited witness" and that Hillary had nothing to do with the fraud being tried.”

The judge’s outburst came as no surprise to those who have followed the judicial activism of Clinton appointees.

It is significant to mention here, as journalist Richard Poe has reported, that, “Between 1994 and 1998, [Clinton] appointed seven new judges to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. – all Clinton cronies. The new appointees nicknamed themselves the "Magnificent Seven" – a name that stuck until the Clintons appointed an eighth member to the team in 1998.”

On December 13, 2005, Mr. Paul's FEC complaint was finally resolved in a secret settlement with Hillary's campaign treasurer, Andrew Grossman – the highest finance official in her senate campaign. Mr. Grossman agreed to pay a civil fine and admitted his culpability in filing false reports that hid more than $721,000 of Mr. Paul’s contributions, monies that he testified under oath in Mr. Rosen’s trial that he knew nothing about!

And so, after five years of Clinton spinners, lawyers and campaign officials covering up and denying the amount and source of Hillary's largest contribution to her 2000 Senate campaign, and after numerous statements by Clinton lawyer David Kendall that "New York Senate 2000 properly reported all donations in 2000," the charade came to an end.

On February 3, 2006, in a hearing before Judge Aurelio Munoz in the case of Paul v. Clinton, dozens of people – Hillary Clinton, President Clinton, Ed Rendell, a CIA assassin, Larry King, Mike Wallace, federal agents, Hollywood stars, and Grammy Award winning singers, among dozens of others – were listed among those to be deposed.

Although Hillary has again petitioned the court to dismiss the suit against her, a motion to depose her was immediately filed by Mr. Paul's lawyers, which is set for a hearing on April 7, 2006.

Mr. Paul said that since Andrew Grossman admitted to hiding nearly three-quarters of a million dollars from the FEC, “Hillary has no excuse but to refund it to me because it was intended for her national senatorial campaign and she knows that the limit for individual contributions of soft money (large, unregulated donations) to a national campaign is $25,000.”

He said that he also intends to file a complaint with the Ethics Committee of the U.S. Senate “because Hillary vowed to the voters of New York that she would not accept any soft-money contributions, which Grossman’s testimony totally contradicted.”

And he added that he is still rankled that the fundraising luncheon he gave for Hillary, for which his expenses exceeded $27,000 (because $20,000 went to Dionne Warwick for singing one song, "That's What Friends Are For"), as well as the $20,000 he laid out for the tea, “were scrupulously unreported to the FEC and remain so to this day, notwithstanding my protestations."

At the end of March or beginning of April 2006, “discovery” will begin. Discovery allows one party (that would be Mr. Paul’s lawyers) to question – in videotaped sessions – the defending party under oath (that would be Hillary and company and any knowledgeable witnesses); to demand documents (or physical evidence); to present written questions under penalty of perjury; and to conduct depositions (in-person interviews of the defending party(s) under oath. The purpose of discovery is to assess the strength or weakness of an opponent's case, with the idea of opening settlement talks or to gather information to use at trial.

Mr. Paul summarily dismisses any notion that Hillary is ignorant of her campaign’s egregious abuses. Calling her “the elephant in the living room of this case, “ he said: “of course Hillary knew about the underreporting. Before the gala, she negotiated the largest fee paid to a vendor in the gala – $850,000 – that was demanded by her friend, the Grammy producer Gary Smith. She knew his fee alone was twice what was reported for the entire event.”

In addition, Mr. Paul asserts, Hillary’s spokesman, Howard Wolfson, “admitted a few days after the gala that she knew the event cost more than $1 million. And weeks before the third false FEC report was filed on July 30, 2001, Hillary had been served with a civil complaint, an FEC complaint, and a demand letter, all detailing with checks and invoices the expenses I had paid that exceeded $1.2 million – yet she allowed the third false report to be filed and never amended it until the FEC action on January 30, 2006!”

Taming the Beast
Actually, Mr. Paul doesn’t want to tame Hillary. He wants to expose what he alleges is her deceit and dishonesty; be paid back the money the finance treasurer of her senatorial campaign admitted to concealing; and reveal Hillary’s unique unfitness – “by virtue of her serial defiance of the Rule of Law and her attack on the integrity of the electoral process her lack of character and integrity” – to be president of the United States. Mr. Paul also wants money damages from his liaison to the Clintons, Jim Levin, and from Bill Clinton himself for the damage they did to Stan Lee Media, his animation business.

As he told Ray Hernandez of The New York Times in a May 2005 article: "This fund-raiser will ultimately be viewed as [Hillary’s] Chappaquiddick and cost her the presidency."

Mr. Paul is cognizant, however, that he is facing a formidable foe – a woman who was named one of the nation’s top 100 lawyers by the National Law Review in 1988 and 1991.

But Hillary’s much-vaunted intelligence and putative legal skills may not be enough to allow her to resort to her past scandal-honed winning strategy: denying everything.

Hillary’s advocates are working overtime to discredit Mr. Paul. But her adversaries are speculating about what appear to be her increasingly dreary prospects for a 2008 presidential run. Calling her everything from her a humorless harridan to a dangerous diva, they have created websites like http://www.hilltruth.com and http://wwww.stophernow.com that are dedicated to assuring that she will either never run for the highest office in the land or never succeed in ascending to the U.S. presidency, and http://www.justhillary.com, which Roll Call described as “a one-stop shopping website for fans and foes of " Hillary.

But most enraging to Hillary’s fan base is that they are even comparing her – with supreme irony – to the president whose demise she personally participated in, Richard Nixon.

They are not alone. In an interview with Kathryn Lopez of NRO online, Ed Klein, a former New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief and the best-selling author of “The Truth About Hillary,” said that Hillary can accurately be compared to Richard Nixon because: “Like Nixon, Hillary is paranoid and has an enemies list. Like Nixon, Hillary has used FBI files against her enemies. Like Nixon, Hillary believes that the ends justify the means. Like Nixon, Hillary has a penchant for doing illegal things.”

According to Mr. Paul, who knew Mr. Nixon and represented his best friend, Bebe Reboso, “Hillary is a greater threat to our democracy than Nixon because she believes it is her personal destiny to become the most important woman in human history and that she should never be held accountable for anything she does to achieve her destiny.”

According to a 2003 article written by Jerry Zeifman, former general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, Hillary “advocated denying President Nixon representation by counsel.” Which was why Mr. Zeifman concluded that many of her conclusions were “ethically flawed” and that “I could not recommend her for any future position of public or private trust.”

Writer Gabriel Garnica reserves the most damning indictment. “Hillary is a zealous robot with great ability to hide and slither toward her goals,” he says. “If cunning treachery is the hallmark of the devil…then Hillary Clinton received an A in the devil’s course on the subject and wants to ride that excellent grade in cunning deception all the way to The White House.”

But not if Peter Paul has his way!
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based author and journalist who has been a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards

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