[guest post by Dana]

On the heels of the NYT report about Bill O’Reilly’s humongous $32 million payout to former Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl, the no-spinmeister released the full text of Wiehl’s artfully worded affidavit.

First, David French offers an explainer:

…statements like this aren’t uncommon after settlements — especially when those settlements involve prominent people or prominent institutions. Part of the “purchase price” of the settlement often includes a statement that defendants use to try to claim that the litigation was nonsense from the beginning. Plaintiffs will accept the payout and do their best to negotiate language that’s as meaningless as possible. They want the settlement amount to do the talking. Negotiations over statements or affidavits can sometimes be more complex and contentious than negotiations over even seven-figure payouts. The wording is careful, and the statements are notable mainly for what they don’t say.

He then breaks down the statement in an amusing fashion, showing why it doesn’t exonerate O’Reilly, in spite of that being the hoped for outcome:

1. I have known Bill O’Reilly for over 18 years. We have worked together, we have socialized, and on occasion I gave him legal advice.

Translation: I used to work with Bill O’Reilly.

2. At the end of 2016, I hired counsel who prepared a draft complaint asserting claims against Bill O’Reilly. We have since resolved all of our issues. I would no longer make the allegations contained in the draft complaint.

Translation: I sued O’Reilly, he paid me $32 million, and I agreed to drop the suit. I “would no longer make the allegations” because every settlement agreement ever created in the entire history of the universe bars the plaintiff from ever again raising her original claims.

3. Additionally, over the years while I was acting as Bill O’Reilly’s counsel, he forwarded to me certain explicit emails that were sent to him, and any advice sought or rendered is attorney-client privileged, confidential, and private. I have no claims against Bill O’Reilly concerning any of those emails or any of the allegations in the draft complaint.

Translation: My lawyers are very, very good. Admire their handiwork. If you read closely, all I said is that he sent me explicit emails, I can’t talk about them, and I have (note the verb tense) no claims. Of course I currently have no claims; I settled them for $32 million.

4. Also, I have reached an accommodation with Fox News regarding the termination of my employment. I have no claims against Fox News.

Translation: Same verb tense as the previous paragraph, y’all. I have no claims because I settled those claims.

Allahpundit asks the question that answers itself:

What the affidavit doesn’t say is that she recants the allegations in her complaint as having been untrue. You’re left wondering why, if nothing happened between them, there’s nothing in there that states plainly, “I, Lis Wiehl, hereby acknowledge that Bill O’Reilly never harassed, assaulted, raped, or behaved otherwise inappropriately with me in any way.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson have both responded to the news of O’Reilly’s whopping $32 million payout. O’Reilly, true to form, is punching back.

O’Reilly also said today that he is mad at God about the sexual misconduct allegations, and that he regrets having settled with Wiehl.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

So I wrote a spittle-flecked post at RedState about the cancellation of Bill Browder’s US visa waiver pursuant to yet another bogus Interpol notice from Vladimir Putin. Fortunately, I saved my rage for Putin and gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. Then I went to look at Browder’s Twitter after the post was published and saw that Browder’s visa waiver had been restored a couple of hours earlier. (I saw no news stories about the restoration despite looking before posting.)

Anyway, there’s no point in repeating the whole clusterfark here, so I will merely link the post. I repeat that the U.S. needs to fix the system so that Putin can’t do this again.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

I figured (and hoped) we were done with this, but both Trump and Big Media evidently want it to continue. So here we are.

Here’s Myeshia Johnson’s interview with George Snuffleupagus:

Here's the full interview with Myeshia Johnson, widow of fallen soldier Sgt. La David Johnson pic.twitter.com/1pbqEonlH0

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 23, 2017

Ms. Johnson asked for the call to be put on speaker so her aunt and uncle could hear. She did not like Trump’s tone. She said that he said: “He knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways.” She said of Trump: “I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name.” She said the only way he could remember her husband’s name was because his file was in front of him. (Trump told her he had the file in front of him.) She said the call made her very upset. “It made me cry even worse.”

She said of Rep. Wilson: “She’s been in our family since we were little kids.” Her uncle in law had been Ms. Wilson’s elementary school principal (I’m assuming she means Ms. Wilson was his principal), and her husband had been in her 5000 Role Model program. As for what funny hat Congresswoman Frederica Wilson said about the call, Ms. Johnson said:

Whatever Miss Wilson said was not fabricated. What she said was 100% correct. It was Master Sgt. Neil, me, my aunt, and uncle, and the driver, and Ms. Wilson in the car. The phone was on speaker phone. Why would we fabricate something like that?

Asked whether she had anything more to say to Trump, she said no.

But Trump has more to say!

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2017

It is political genius to directly contradict the widow’s account. Eight-dimensional chess? Nah. Twenty-dimensional, at least!

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

Over the weekend, Andrew C. McCarthy published an important piece on the Clinton uranium scandal. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth your time. Here are the key paragraphs:

Here’s the kicker: The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal.

The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their “public service.” The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.

McCarthy’s time as a federal prosecutor provides key context for the late and lenient slap on the wrist the key player received — something at odds with normal DoJ policy, but which (if revealed in a timely and normal fashion) would have imperiled Obama’s desired pie-in-the-sky “reset” with Russia. Meanwhile, Congress was kept in the dark, and the original whistleblower was threatened with prosecution if he opened his damn mouth. And always, in the background, is the spectre of the dirty Clintons, raking in the cash in their normal disgusting corrupt fashion.

Lock her up She’s suffered enough, folks. Can’t we all stop talking about this, because of the magnanimity and the thing?

Read it all.

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]