Originally Posted by Newsday
an interview yesterday, Hillary -- whose connection to President Clinton's 2001 sentence commutations for two members of the Weather Underground has become an issue since she tried to raise questions about Obama's acquaintance with another ex-Weatherman -- told "Inside Edition" that she "didn't know anything about" the 2001 clemency case.
You can watch the video below. If it's true, it means that she got the worst briefings in the world when she was running for Senate in 2000 and the clemency issue was hot in Rockland County, and it means that Chuck Schumer didn't even bother to mention the issue to his fellow NY senator-elect/ First Lady after promising the widows of two dead cops to fight against one of the clemencies.
Here's the chronology:
On October 19, 2000, as Hillary was hunting for Senate votes throughout New York, Rockland County's biggest paper, the Journal News, ran a front page story reporting that imprisoned radical Susan Rosenberg -- linked to the 1981 Weather Underground Brinks robbery that left two Nyack cops dead -- was seeking clemency from Bill Clinton.
The next day, the widows and fellow state and local police attended a memorial service for the two dead cops at the site of the killings. Also in attendance: Sen. Chuck Schumer, who in that fall was frequently campaigning with Hillary. According to another front page story, on Oct. 21, he made a pledge to the widows to fight the clemency: "I intend to take our opposition as high as I can in government."
On December 16, 2000, after Hillary became New York's Senator-elect, the paper did another Page 1 story about an upcoming 60 Minutes episode on Rosenberg's clemency application. It included a quote from one of her new constituents, Diane O'Grady, wife of one of the dead cops: "This is a woman who has taken lives."
On December 17, 2000, the "60 Minutes" piece on Rosenberg's case and clemency request ran.
So, Clinton -- in her effort to avoid being connected in any way to the case -- now says she knew nothing about it. Nobody briefed her, either while she was running or after she was elected, on an emotional hot-button issue that intersected her husband with her constituents. Her husband, who invited her to sit in on a White House meeting with another group of Rockland County residents seeking pardons for four Hasidic members of their community, never so much as mentioned Rosenberg.
And Schumer, after making a pledge to widows, never thought to even bring it up with his fellow Senator-elect, who owed him for helping her get elected, and recruit an ally who was widely seen as an influential advisor to her husband, the president. This being the same Schumer who figured out how to take the Senate away from the Republicans!!!
We asked Schumer spokesman Josh Vlasto whether his boss ever spoke to Hillary: "Chuck was the leading advocate against the pardons. He made his arguments to the Justice Department....He talked to the people who could effectuate the decision." We asked for a more direct and responsive answer on whether he ever mentioned it to Hillary, and couldn't get one.
In her assiduous efforts to have nothing to do with the Rosenberg case, Clinton's spokesman has previously said she had no opinion about it except to think that a presidential pardon is a presidential pardon. Here she is, also never even knowing about it.
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