Posted on 05/10/2013 8:16:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
‘Number one about Cheryl Mills, she is one of the smartest people with the highest standards of integrity that I met at the White House,” says Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Clinton, “which is a statement, because there were a lot of smart and a lot of honest people there.”
Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on the Benghazi attack and its aftermath centered unexpectedly on Mills, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s counselor and chief of staff. She is also one of the longest serving, most trusted, and most unflinching members of the former first couple’s inner circle.
If the GOP congressmen and whistleblowers who spoke at Wednesday’s hearing are correct, Mills stands at the center of the Obama administration’s attempt to put the lid on the Benghazi scandal. Ohio congressman Jim Jordan described Mills as “the person next to Secretary Clinton,” tracing the growing scandal to the highest echelons of the State Department.
“She is the fixer for the secretary of state, she is as close as you can get to Hillary Clinton, is that accurate?” he prodded. “Yes, sir,” responded Foreign Service officer Gregory Hicks. He went on to describe a phone call he received from Mills as the investigation into the attack unfolded. “I was instructed not to allow the RSO[regional security officer], the acting deputy chief of mission, and myself to be interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz,” he said, adding that he received a follow-up call from an irate Mills, who demanded details of his meeting with the congressman.
“I have no doubt that she had the right motives in wanting a State Department lawyer to be in the room,” Davis tells me. “She has very high standards of integrity, and she gets angry when they’re not complied with.”
Mills is, by all accounts, a formidable opponent. She played a central role in the scandals that marked President Clinton’s two terms in the White House, and she emerged unfazed and unscathed. She has been here before, and she is no doubt prepared for the showdown that the current political storm may bring.
Mills is perhaps best known for her unwavering defense of the former president during his impeachment trial. As a 33-year-old deputy White House counsel, she offered stirring testimony on the president’s behalf. Grainy C-SPAN footage shows her clad in a gray suit and pearls that provided a stark contrast to her baby face as, for over an hour, she defended the president against charges of obstruction of justice.
Addressing Republicans’ repeated appeals to the primacy of the rule of law, she told the Senate, “As a lawyer, as an American, and as an African American, it is a principle in which I believe to the very core of my being.” She continued, in soothing tones, “We cannot uphold the rule of law only when it is consistent with our beliefs, we must uphold it even when it protects behavior that we don’t like, or that is unattractive, or that is not admirable, or that might even be hurtful.”
The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, who calls Mills Hillary Clinton’s “guardian angel,” has drawn attention to the praise her testimony garnered from the media. The BBC labeled her “the shining star of the defense team” the following day, adding that she “slapped down” the obstruction-of-justice charge levied against the president. The Washington Post was similarly effusive, praising her, at turns, as “remarkable,” and “a legal star on the rise.”
Mills, the daughter of a lieutenant colonel in the Army, was raised in Germany, Belgium, and the United States. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia and a member of the law review at Stanford Law School, she has been connected to the Clintons since 1992, when she moved to Little Rock, Ark., to join the newly elected president’s transition team.
She ascended the ranks quickly at the White House and gained a reputation for fierce loyalty, a tenacious work ethic, and guarding information closely. “When I was at the White House, the debates that always occurred were, ‘How much do we volunteer, how much do we hold back?’ Well, I’m always pushing lawyers to be more forthcoming with the media,” Davis recounts.
Davis, who attended Yale Law School with Hillary Clinton, says that Mills debated effectively when to push facts out — when they were known — and when to delay until they were known. “That’s an argument I’ve had a million times with Cheryl,” he recalls. “If you don’t meet Cheryl Mills’s standard of excellence, she will let you know without any hesitancy, and not always delicately.”
After leaving the Clinton White House, and before returning to the Clintons’ orbit in 2007 to serve as general counsel on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Mills had stints in programming at Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Media and served as a senior vice president at New York University.
Her move to the Clinton campaign, though, and then to the State Department, suggests Mills’s natural habitat is in the ring of Clinton protectors. And they, it seems, feel the same way. The Clintons “like her in the foxhole with them,” the Washington Post has noted. “If something’s on the other side of a brick wall and the Clintons need it, she’ll find a way to get to it: over, around or through.”
To understand Mills and her abiding loyalty, Davis points to his own experience. “She is loyal to the Clintons for the same reason I am loyal to the Clintons,” he says, “because we go back many, many years. She is a loyal friend, but that leads to an innuendo that is unfair and false — that her integrity is compromised.”
The accusations leveled at Wednesday’s hearing belie that characterization. If they are borne out, even such glowing testimonials as Davis’s may not be enough to help Mills — or, more important, her boss.
— Eliana Johnson is media editor of National Review Online.
Lying, corrupt, treasonous, lib-dem b*tch.
People of integrity don’t defend evil.
She had the highest level of integrity of anyone Lanny met in the Clinton White House? Thats called damning with faint praise.
Loyal?
She’s probably been told Hillary will leave Bill for her and they will live happily ever after, married in Washington state.
Ha! Wait until Huma hears about that !!!
>> ‘Number one about Cheryl Mills, she is one of the smartest people with the highest standards of integrity that I met at the White House,” says Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Clinton, “which is a statement, because there were a lot of smart and a lot of honest people there.”
BRB — looks like I’m gonna need my *chest-high* waders for this one.
One “lying ass bitch” after another in this Administration.
A Chinese Empress had the perfect solution for someone guarding a deceitful person. She had her arms and legs amputated and placed her in a large pot in the palace and fed her by hand every day.
The MillStone around Obummer & Clinton `s necks
Amazing. She is loyal to a multi-count sexual predator, a financial fraud perp, and a serial liar. Clearly Mills level of integrity can’t be challenged. Another sleazeball attorney willing to do anything for money.
Apparently, the Marxist Rats are occasionally using comedy as a personal weapon against Conservatives, because I almost laughed myself to death over this one.
Sort of like saying “that’s the best looking pond scum I’ve ever seen”.
A lot of honest people in the Clinton White House? Did Davis say this with a straight face?
by then, polygamous carpet-muncher marriages will be legalized, don’t you know...
:-/
“‘Number one about Cheryl Mills, she is one of the smartest people with the highest standards of integrity that I met at the White House,” says Lanny Davis,...”
Trouble is, he’s probably telling the truth. Problem is, that this is the Obamadork White House where room temp IQ is considered to be “too smart”.
There is no one there that could even begin to pass a real university level course in engineering or math - rather than their milquetoast courses in creating t*rd pushiing.
They are all loons, and NONE have ever created (nor could create) anything useful.
They are slime, slime slime, slime.
Oh, and they are slime.
If/when this whore of the legal system is thrown under the bus, we’ll know it’s getting serious.
Davis’s “straight face” always seemed to me to wear the slightest hint of a smirk. Always. The man oozes evil to the point that I cannot stand to look at him for long.
Lib dims are always “ the smartest, brightest, best educated, most talented...” Blah, blah, blah....
But you find they always got some “special treatment” to get heir leg up...Affirmative action, etc.
And if she was the one who so eloquently defended Bubba on obstruction of justice charges, why can he not practice law any more? Hmmmmm?
And she looks like Usher in drag....
Discovery of 44 Tapes Exposes Vulnerabilities of 2 Institutions
Published: October 12, 1997
In uncharacteristically direct comments, Ms. Reno retaliated at the White House for blindsiding her. ‘’I was mad,’’ she said to reporters on Thursday. For his part, the President was left to defend his aides as behaving clumsily but in good faith. ‘’I think it was just an accident,’’ he told reporters. But privately, aides said Mr. Clinton was furious last Friday after
*** Cheryl Mills, a deputy White House counsel, briefed him in the Oval Office about the discovery — and the subsequent ham-handed release of tapes that he believed vindicated him.
Washington Post 9/9/98 Edward Walsh “.Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.), chairman of a House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee that has been investigating the White House’s use of a computer database during the 1996 campaign, said he will also ask the Justice Department to investigate whether the White House was guilty of “theft of government property” by using information stored in the government database for campaign purposes. McIntosh said the investigation had uncovered “very strong evidence” that
***Mills lied to Congress when she testified last year that she thought documents dealing with the database actually concerned another computer system at the White House. He said there also was strong evidence that the White House shared information in the database with the Democratic National Committee for fund-raising and other political purposes and that that would amount to “theft of government property.” .”
DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
SECTION: BEHIND THE OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE ALLEGATIONS
SUBSECTION: INTEFERENCE WITH INVESTIGATIONS
Revised 1/8/01
INTERFERENCE WITH INVESTIGATIONS
Loral & Hughes/China Missile Guidance - after the fact waiver
William Sessions investigation of Department of Justice
Madison Guaranty and others (Atty Gen Janet Reno fired all U.S. Attorneys in joint decision with White House 2 weeks into her tenure.)
Tyson complaints, when Smaltz failed to answer, DOJ took important elements of the investigation away
Lums claim Hubbell interceded for them
Ron Brown tip off to Lums
http://alamo-girl.com/0312.htm
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