Topic: CNSNews.com
Frank Salvato jumps on the Peter Paul bandwagon in an Aug. 25 CNSNews.com column, but he spends much of his column trying to explain away the fact that Paul is a convicted felon.
Salvato repeated invokes Paul's assertion that his case -- in which Paul claims that he spent $2 million on a 2000 Hollywood gala for the Clintons -- is "the largest case of campaign fraud in US history" (a term he repeats three times). He asserted that the event "netted a sorely needed $1 million in hard money donations for Hillary Clinton's campaign, donations needed to keep the campaign from going broke."
In fact, as the New York Sun -- a conservative newspaper and no fan of the Clintons -- reported, "a Federal Election Commission analysis released at the trial found that a bookkeeper's decision to pay more expenses with hard money than the law required meant that, in the end, the understatement of Paul's in-kind donations did not benefit Mrs. Clinton's bid. Her campaign netted just $57,000 from the event, though more than $1 million went to national Democratic coffers."
Then comes Savato's whitewashing of Paul's status as a convicted felon:
Those who use the "convicted felon" argument in attempting to discredit Mr. Paul's assertions are relativistic. The federal government routinely uses the testimony of convicted felons and criminals to achieve favorable outcomes in trials.
[...]
Further, the fact that Mr. Paul is a convicted felon (an interesting story in its own right) is irrelevant due to the fact that the FEC documents and investigation proving the campaign finance fraud committed by Hillary Clinton's 2000 senatorial campaign are independent of Mr. Paul.
First: Yes, it's an interesting story -- so why doesn't Savato tell it? Perhaps because, as we've detailed when WorldNetDaily tried to whitewash Paul's criminal record, fraud and cocaine possession just doesn't look good on a resume. And Paul's most recent felony -- pleading guilty to a stock fraud scheme that cost investors and banks $25 million, during which he fled to Brazil to avoid arrest and fought extradition for two years -- doesn't look good either.
Second: Paul's current felony conviction is not "irrelevant." Paul has not been sentenced yet, and he's throwing out whatever juicy charges he can against the Clintons in order to stay out of prison (or at least get a reduced sentence).
Further, Salvato offers no evidence why a three-time convicted felon should be considered in any way trustworthy.
Salvato has been cranking out the liberal-hate columns of late. His Aug. 17 column was, to use a term he himself used, a "spittle-infused rant" against the "American Fifth Column," whch he bashed as "short-sighted, maladjusted, narcissists" and "the fringe elements of our society." He declared that "We, the silent majority, must shake off the apathy that has rendered ineffective our constitutionally mandated duty to civic responsibility and we must do it now, before it is too late."
And his Aug. 3 column was headlined, "I Don't Dislike Democrats, I Oppose the Progressive Left," which even includes the phrase, "I have many friends who are Democrats." The feeling one gets from it is that it's adapted from some long-lost previous work in which he substituted "black people" for "Democrats" and a certain N-word for "Progressive Left."
