Tag: Blinded By The Right

Some of Hillary Clinton’s top aides have been interviewed by the FBI, and so far there’s reportedly no evidence she broke the law—but she hasn’t spoken to investigators yet.

DAVID A. GRAHAM MAY 13, 2016 POLITICS
Back in early March, The New York Times reported that the FBI would be interviewing Hillary Clinton and her top aides about her private email server within the coming weeks. A source told the paper the investigation would probably conclude by early May, at which point the Justice Department would be left to decide whether to file charges against Clinton or anyone else, and what charges to file. The final decision rests with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Then things went quiet for a while. Early last week—fully two months after the Times report—Clinton even told Andrea Mitchell that the FBI hadn’t contacted her for an interview about the server. What gives?

The email-server story seems to move in waves: silence for a while, then an onslaught of news. Late last Thursday, it emerged that while Clinton hasn’t spoken to the FBI yet, several of her top aides have. (She has repeatedly said that she will cooperate if asked to speak.) One of the aides to speak is Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s closest and longest-serving confidants. It’s not clear what other staffers have been interviewed.

Meanwhile, a judge ruled last week that the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch might be able to depose Clinton as part of a lawsuit over her use of private email—a matter that concerns not the national-security implications of a potentially vulnerable server, but whether Clinton actually complied with federal-records law in turning over her emails. (That case, in turn, is directly about Abedin’s employment and whether it broke federal rules. The email situation is a many-headed hydra.) Also this week, the hacker Guccifer—most famous for publishing George W. Bush’s paintings—claimed he had hacked Clinton’s server, though FBI investigators apparently see no basis for the claim.

The good news for Clinton is that there appears to be no evidence so far that she broke U.S. law, both CNN and The Washington Post report. So far, there’s no indication that a federal grand jury is involved, either. Those are both good signs for Clinton, who has held all along that while she made a mistake in using the private-email system, she did not break any laws. But Clinton isn’t in the clear yet. Investigators reportedly still want to interview her. Besides, as the case has shown time and again, the leaks making it to the press have not always been reliable.

Even as the political world waits breathlessly for the resolution of that case, other scandals continue to burble up. Take the latest with regards to the Clinton Foundation, which presents a range of possible conflicts of interests. The Wall Street Journal’s James Grimaldi reports on how the Clinton Global Initiative, a part of the foundation, moved to give $2 million to a for-profit company partly owned by a friend of the Clintons and former Democratic political candidate. Bill Clinton reportedly personally vouched for the company to then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department awarded it more than $800,000. There are questions about whether it’s proper for the CGI to give money to a for-profit company, as well as questions about conflict of interest. A spokesman told the Journal that the commitment reflected an alignment of purpose, rather than any conflict.

The CGI case is a classic of the genre: Complex, confusing, and tough to firmly adjudicate. The email story works much the same way. The fact that Clinton was using a private server for her work email emerged in the course of the investigation into the September 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, which killed four Americans. None of the content of the emails so far has been especially damning about Benghazi or anything else—though there are some embarrassing moments, including Clinton’s seeming technological ignorance and the flattery of friends like Sidney Blumenthal. But a total of 65 emails were not released because they contain information classified “secret.” Clinton and her aides insist she did not send any classified information, and that anything that is now secret had its classification changed later. Others, including the inspector general for the Intelligence Community, have disagreed.
The emails have become a classic Clinton scandal. Even though investigations have found no wrongdoing on her part with respect to the Benghazi attacks themselves, Clinton’s private-email use and concerns about whether she sent classified information have become huge stories unto themselves. This is a pattern with the Clinton family, which has been in the public spotlight since Bill Clinton’s first run for office, in 1974: Something that appears potentially scandalous on its face turns out to be innocuous, but an investigation into it reveals different questionable behavior. The canonical case is Whitewater, a failed real-estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978. Although no inquiry ever produced evidence of wrongdoing, investigations ultimately led to President Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

With Hillary Clinton leading the field for the Democratic nomination for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to the State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—have fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.

Clinton’s State Department Emails
What? Setting aside the question of the Clintons’ private email server, what’s actually in the emails that Clinton did turn over to State? While some of the emails related to Benghazi have been released, there are plenty of others covered by public-records laws that haven’t.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Serious. Initially, it seemed that the interest in the emails would stem from damaging things that Clinton or other aides had said: cover-ups, misrepresentations, who knows? But so far, other than some cringeworthy moments of sucking up and some eye-rolly emails from contacts like Sidney Blumenthal, the emails have been remarkably boring. The main focus now is on classification. Sixty-five emails contain information that is now classified. The question is whether any of it, and how much of it, was classified at the time it was sent. Clinton has said she didn’t knowingly send or receive classified material on the account. The State Department and Intelligence Community have disagreed about that. In addition, the Intelligence Community’s inspector general wrote in a January letter that Clinton’s server contained information marked “special access program,” higher even than top secret. Some emails that Clinton didn’t turn over have also since surfaced.

Benghazi
What? On September 11, 2012, attackers overran a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Since then, Republicans have charged that Hillary Clinton failed to adequately protect U.S. installations or that she attempted to spin the attacks as spontaneous when she knew they were planned terrorist operations. She testifies for the first time on October 22.
When? September 11, 2012-present

How serious is it? Benghazi has gradually turned into a classic “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” scenario. Only the fringes argue, at this point, that Clinton deliberately withheld aid. A House committee continues to investigate the killings and aftermath, but Clinton’s marathon appearance before the committee in October was widely considered a win for her. However, it was through the Benghazi investigations that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became public—a controversy that remains potent.

Conflicts of Interest in Foggy Bottom
What? Before becoming Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills worked for Clinton on an unpaid basis for four month while also working for New York University, in which capacity she negotiated on the school’s behalf with the government of Abu Dhabi, where it was building a campus. In June 2012, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin’s status at State changed to “special government employee,” allowing her to also work for Teneo, a consulting firm run by Bill Clinton’s former right-hand man. She also earned money from the Clinton Foundation and was paid directly by Hillary Clinton.

Who? Both Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin are among Clinton’s longest-serving and closest aides. Abedin remains involved in her campaign (and she’s also married to Anthony Weiner).

When? January 2009-February 2013

How serious is it? This is arcane stuff, to be sure. There are questions about conflict of interest—such as whether Teneo clients might have benefited from special treatment by the State Department while Abedin worked for both. To a great extent, this is just an extension of the tangle of conflicts presented by the Clinton Foundation and the many overlapping roles of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The Clintons’ Private Email Server
What? During the course of the Benghazi investigation, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt learned Clinton had used a personal email account while secretary of state. It turned out she had also been using a private server, located at a house in New York. The result was that Clinton and her staff decided which emails to turn over to the State Department as public records and which to withhold; they say they then destroyed the ones they had designated as personal.
When? 2009-2013, during Clinton’s term as secretary.

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; top aides including Huma Abedin

How serious is it? The biggest question right now appears to be whether the server was hacked, which could have exposed classified or otherwise sensitive information. Even if not, there’s the question of whether using the serve was appropriate. The rules governing use of personal emails are murky, and Clinton aides insist she followed the rules. There’s no dispositive evidence otherwise so far. Politically, there are questions about how she selected the emails she turned over and what was in the ones she deleted. The FBI has reportedly managed to recover some of the deleted correspondence.

Sidney Blumenthal
What? A former journalist, Blumenthal was a top aide in the second term of the Bill Clinton administration and helped on messaging during the bad old days. He served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and when she took over the State Department, she sought to hire Blumenthal. Obama aides, apparently still smarting over his role in attacks on candidate Obama, refused the request, so Clinton just sought out his counsel informally. At the same time, Blumenthal was drawing a check from the Clinton Foundation.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Some of the damage is already done. Blumenthal was apparently the source of the idea that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous, a notion that proved incorrect and provided a political bludgeon against Clinton and Obama. He also advised the secretary on a wide range of other issues, from Northern Ireland to China, and passed along analysis from his son Max, a staunch critic of the Israeli government (and conservative bête noire). But emails released so far show even Clinton’s top foreign-policy guru, Jake Sullivan, rejecting Blumenthal’s analysis, raising questions about her judgment in trusting him.

The Speeches
What? Since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, both Clintons have made millions of dollars for giving speeches.
When? 2001-present

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; Chelsea Clinton

How serious is it? Intermittently dangerous. It has a tendency to flare up, then die down. Senator Bernie Sanders made it a useful attack against her in early 2016, suggesting that by speaking to banks like Goldman Sachs, she was compromised. There have been calls for Clinton to release the transcripts of her speeches, which she was declined to do, saying if every other candidate does, she will too. For the Clintons, who left the White House up to their ears in legal debt, lucrative speeches—mostly by the former president—proved to be an effective way of rebuilding wealth. They have also been an effective magnet for prying questions. Where did Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton speak? How did they decide how much to charge? What did they say? How did they decide which speeches would be given on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, with fees going to the charity, and which would be treated as personal income? Are there cases of conflicts of interest or quid pro quos—for example, speaking gigs for Bill Clinton on behalf of clients who had business before the State Department?

The Clinton Foundation
What? Bill Clinton’s foundation was actually established in 1997, but after leaving the White House it became his primary vehicle for … well, everything. With projects ranging from public health to elephant-poaching protection and small-business assistance to child development, the foundation is a huge global player with several prominent offshoots. In 2013, following Hillary Clinton’s departure as secretary of State, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

When? 1997-present

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; Chelsea Clinton, etc.

How serious is it? If the Clinton Foundation’s strength is President Clinton’s endless intellectual omnivorousness, its weakness is the distractibility and lack of interest in detail that sometimes come with it. On a philanthropic level, the foundation gets decent ratings from outside review groups, though critics charge that it’s too diffuse to do much good, that the money has not always achieved what it was intended to, and that in some cases the money doesn’t seem to have achieved its intended purpose. The foundation made errors in its tax returns it has to correct. Overall, however, the essential questions about the Clinton Foundation come down to two, related issues. The first is the seemingly unavoidable conflicts of interest: How did the Clintons’ charitable work intersect with their for-profit speeches? How did their speeches intersect with Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department? Were there quid-pro-quos involving U.S. policy? Did the foundation steer money improperly to for-profit companies owned by friends? The second, connected question is about disclosure. When Clinton became secretary, she agreed that the foundation would make certain disclosures, which it’s now clear it didn’t always do. And the looming questions about Clinton’s State Department emails make it harder to answer those questions.

The Bad Old Days
What is it? Since the Clintons have a long history of controversies, there are any number of past scandals that continue to float around, especially in conservative media: Whitewater. Troopergate. Paula Jones. Monica Lewinsky. Vince Foster. Juanita Broaddrick.

When? 1975-2001

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; a brigade of supporting characters

How serious is it? The conventional wisdom is that they’re not terribly dangerous. Some are wholly spurious (Foster). Others (Lewinsky, Whitewater) have been so exhaustively investigated it’s hard to imagine them doing much further damage to Hillary Clinton’s standing. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal famously boosted her public approval ratings. But the January 2016 resurfacing of Juanita Broaddrick’s rape allegations offers a test case to see whether the conventional wisdom is truly wise—or just conventional.

In the eighth episode of the Culture Caucus podcast, John Heilemann and Will Leitch discuss the obligations of docudramas: Do they have to stick to the historical record?

Last Saturday, the film Confirmation, a dramatic exploration of the infamous Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings of 1991, debuted on HBO. The film received mostly positive reviews, and it served to conjure up all those ugly memories of 25 years ago, and force us to wonder if we’d learned anything since. The hearings were a flashpoint for issues of gender and race and the workplace—debates that we still haven’t entirely pinned down today. Plus, it was fun to watch Greg Kinnear’s Joe Biden impersonation.

In the eighth episode of the Culture Caucus podcast, we look at Confirmation and, more broadly, at the notion of docudramas. How much obligation do they have to stick to the historical record? Does it matter if they’re factual if they tell a more emotional truth? And is their most important job simply to entertain, or to educate? Or neither? We discuss the film and also John’s specific experience with the HBO adaptation of the book Game Change, which he wrote with our own Mark Halperin. What’s it like seeing your words turned into cinema?
In the second half of the podcast, we talk to Jane Mayer, whose new book, Dark Money, is about the Koch brothers’ influence in politics. She also co-wrote, with Jill Abramson, the book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, about the Thomas hearings, and she discusses her thoughts on the film, how truthful it feels, and which sections she found to be a cop out.
Mayer is amazing, and it’s worth downloading just to listen to her, even if you’re sick of us.

With a cinematic take on Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation and Anita Hill, director Rick Famuyiwa had to look back to go forward.
JOE BERKOWITZ

04.15.16 8:47 AM
Director Rick Famuyiwa’s debut, The Wood, was a semi-autobiographical film set in Inglewood, where he grew up, and filled with characters based on the family and friends who helped shape his young life. Last year’s Dope, about an ambitious teen trying to go from Inglewood to Harvard, also drew from Famuyiwa’s experience, in a less direct way. With his latest feature, though, for the first time ever, he’s recreating a piece of history he only experienced, like nearly everyone else around at the time did, by watching along on TV.
Rick Famuyiwa
Famuyiwa was at the University of Southern California in 1991, when the hearing began for Clarence Thomas’s confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. He was a political science major at the time, having not yet transferred to his film school destiny, and so when the hearing gravitated toward Anita Hill, Famuyiwa was riveted. He recognized that he was living through a radical chapter of the kind of history he and his classmates were losing sleep studying. Now, 25 years later, he’s hoping his cinematic version of that moment, Confirmation, will have the same entrancing effect on HBO viewers.
Confirmation stars Kerry Washington as Anita Hill, the lawyer whose reluctant accusations against her former boss at the Department of Education and Equal Opportunity Commission, Clarence Thomas, brought about an increased focus on sexual harassment, and empowered women to speak up about it. (Thomas is played by HBO vet, Wendell Pierce, from The Wire and Treme.) Although Famuyiwa was familiar from his other films with investigating his past, he had to adjust his approach to directing when it came to examining—and reproducing—Americans’ shared past. In advance of Confirmation’s premiere on April 16, Co.Create talked with Famuyiwa about objectivity, old footage, and how we used to get our news.
THE WHOLE WORLD USED TO WATCH THINGS TOGETHER
“It was interesting, when I went back and realized the testimony only took place over three days total,” Famuyiwa says. “My recollection for the time was that it was going on all the time for weeks and weeks. And I think that’s because it was so concentrated, the coverage of it was so intense. It wasn’t like today where we’re we get our information and news through such disparate avenues that there’s very little besides the Super Bowl that kind of captures the public imagination at once. This particular period where Anita Hill surfaced was very compressed. I wanted to reflect that in the storytelling because I felt like that was a part of why it was such a pivotal moment in our history; it wasn’t just the salacious allegations and the nomination, but that we collectively watched and that at the time there was really just the three networks and CNN. It was fascinating how much editorial power these three places had to shape public opinion. And how they covered it really shaped our point of view in a way that, today, we’re completely distrustful of those sources but back then we completely trusted their reportage.”
DECIDING WHEN TO USE ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE AND WHY
“There were hours and hours of old TV news material to comb through—it was a deep and long process—but I think mostly what I wanted to use the footage for was to contextualize and illuminate and give that sense of how we were receiving information,” Famuyiwa says. “Because we as an audience weren’t privy to any behind the scenes information, we were just hearing the accounts being reported by various news agencies. I think in some cases, the footage informed things that I thought about before I shot. I wanted certain moments where we would have some journalistic commentary, but then other moments came after putting a cut together and feeling like we have more context here and there, so it became a sort of improvisational feel about where and how these things needed to land in the film more than anything that was scripted, because they weren’t.”
GOTTA HEAR BOTH SIDES
“Some may feel it’s a cop out, but we don’t really know the specifics of what happened—we have a record where one person said something happened, and one person went on the record under oath and said it didn’t happen, and there hasn’t necessarily been any investigation or reporting that’s said one has been definitively in one place or the other,” Famuyiwa says. “At least for me, it wasn’t interesting to dig into what that story was or what that incident was or trying to get any sort of narrative push out of that. For me, what was compelling was the mere fact that you had these two people who were very successful and accomplished in their own right testifying to these salacious allegations and that you had a panel of senators that looked nothing like them—all white male senators—and these two black people testifying.”

“I thought there was narrative propulsion in that that was more dynamic than just the he said/she said of it, and so it made it easier to kind of deal with it in real time and say in 1991 nobody knew or could even suppose to know what the truth was, so we were going by the information that was coming out as it was coming out. Everyone was reacting in real time from the senators to Thomas to Anita Hill, and we didn’t have the 20/20 hindsight that we do now. I wanted to deal with it in the moment, and once I decided to do that, and not necessarily through the lens of 25 years later, it made it easier to say we’re not necessarily going to go one way or the other about who was telling the truth or who wasn’t.”
DON’T CHANGE THE CHARACTERS, FIND CHARACTER BEATS
“Most of these people are still around and still vibrant and one of them is a sitting vice president and one of them is a Supreme Court Justice,” Famuyiwa says. “At the end of the day, it is a film and we had to do what we had to do to take an event that took place over several days and weeks and compress it into an hour and 40 minute film. The main challenges just had to do with balancing your instincts to tell a story with characters a certain way vs the historical record. So often there’d be moments where obviously if I was just writing this is a fiction, I’d say, ‘Now it’s time for a scene where this happens or now a character does this or that,’ and obviously that was the challenge of this is that you can’t create those moments. So you sort of have to find the moments around the hearings and around the testimony, find character beats, but not get too far into your imagination that you’re not staying true to who these people are. But you definitely think about it and you understand that because it’s our recent history, that makes it more challenging than making a film about people who are not around to comment on it any more.

By Devon Ivie Follow @devonsaysrelax

On Saturday night, HBO will air its political-thriller film Confirmation, which chronicles the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas after Anita Hill alleged that Thomas sexually harassed her when she worked for him years prior. This spurred a media frenzy, and the highly watched televised hearings simultaneously captivated the country and reignited interest in D.C. politics. Ahead of the film’s premiere, we’ve compiled a list of the key figures behind the hearings whom you should reacquaint yourself with, and where they are now.

Anita Hill (Kerry Washington)
When Clarence Thomas was nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 to succeed Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, law professor Anita Hill came forward alleging she was the victim of sexual harassment from Thomas when they worked together at the United States Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. While her claims were ultimately dismissed, the hearings helped increase awareness of workplace harassment across the country.

Where is she now? Hill is currently a professor of social policy, law, and women’s and gender studies at Brandeis University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate-level classes.

Clarence Thomas (Wendell Pierce)
Before receiving the Supreme Court nomination, Clarence Thomas had an expansive law career, which included 16 months as a federal judge in the D.C. Circuit. He vehemently denied Hill’s claims, saying the hearings were a “circus” and “a national disgrace.” He ended up being confirmed by a close majority, 52-48, becoming the second African-American to serve on the Court.

Where is he now? He’s still an associate justice of the Supreme Court, and is often considered the Court’s most conservative member.

Angela Wright (Jennifer Hudson)
Like Hill, Angela Wright publicly alleged that Thomas made several unwanted sexual advances when she worked as his press secretary at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (Thomas later fired Wright from her position, and she took a job as a journalist in North Carolina.) She never officially testified during the hearings for reasons that are still unknown.

Where is she now? After nearly ten years at the Charlotte Observer, Wright went on to on a career in communications.

Joe Biden (Greg Kinnear)
As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (and United States senator for Delaware), Joe Biden presided over the hearings. Even though he ended up voting against confirming Thomas for the position, he was strongly criticized by women’s groups and liberal legal groups for mishandling the case, one of the main complaints being he didn’t push for Angela Wright to testify.

Where is he now? He’s serving a second term as vice-president of the United States under President Barack Obama.

John Danforth (Bill Irwin)
The relationship between John Danforth and Thomas went back years — a young Thomas served on his staff as an assistant attorney general in Missouri. As a United States senator for Missouri during the time of the hearings, Danforth was one of Thomas’s biggest advocates for the Supreme Court role, and is regarded as being one of the main reasons he was ultimately confirmed.

Where is he now? After a brief tenure as the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Danforth retired from politics in 2005.

Charles Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright)
Charles Ogletree served as Hill’s lead attorney during the hearings.

Where is he now? He’s currently Harvard Law School’s Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, as well as the founder and executive director of Harvard’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

Ted Kennedy (Treat Williams)
As the chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee as well as a United States senator for Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy was part of the committee that helped oversee the hearings. He was widely criticized for remaining silent for nearly its entirety.

Where is he now? In 2009, Kennedy died of brain cancer, at the age of 77.

Kenneth Duberstein (Eric Stonestreet)
A prominent D.C. lobbyist after he ended his tenure as President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, President George H.W. Bush enlisted Kenneth Duberstein to “coach” Thomas and help ensure he would be appointed to the Supreme Court.

Where is he now? Duberstein is still an active and in-demand lobbyist.

Ricki Seidman (Grace Gummer)
Ricki Seidman served as Ted Kennedy’s chief investigator on the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. She was the first Senate staffer Hill confided in about Thomas’s sexual harassment.

Where is she now? Seidman is a senior principal at TSD Communications, a small firm based in D.C.

Orrin Hatch (Dylan Baker)
As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch took a leading role in the hearings and questioned Hill in a manner that was perceived by the public to be combative and misogynistic.

Where is he now? Hatch currently holds many governmental positions — he’s a United States senator for Utah (a role he’s held since 1977) and the president pro tempore of the United States Senate. He also made a cameo on Parks and Recreation.

Harriet Grant (Zoe Lister-Jones)
One of Joe Biden’s chief aides during the hearings, Harriet Grant was a young lawyer who assisted in reviewing Hill’s allegations.

Where is she now? She continued to serve as a D.C. lawyer for many years after the hearings ended. She has since retired.

Alan K. Simpson (Peter McRobbie)
Alan Simpson, then a United States senator for Wyoming, was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who was present for Hill’s testimony. He was noted for being antagonistic in his questioning.

Where is he now? Since retiring from politics, Simpson was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and had a brief stint as the co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. He later said he was “a monster” in his behavior toward Hill.

Shirley Wiegand (Erika Christensen)

Best friend and a colleague of Hill’s at the Oklahoma University School of Law, Shirley Wiegand supported Hill throughout the duration of the hearings. She said of the experience: “Anita and I viewed ourselves and our mission in overly simplistic terms, as two farm girls who were taking the truth to Washington. When we got there, it became apparent that the truth was not relevant, so Anita packed the truth up and took it home.”

Where is she now? Wiegand is an emerita professor of law at the Marquette University, where she has taught since 1997.

Mark Paoletta (Daniel Sauli)

Mark Paoletta worked as the assistant counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and his job was to ensure Thomas’s court appointment went as smoothly as possible despite the media madness that encompassed the hearings.

Where is he now? He has continued to serve as an attorney specializing in congressional investigations, and is also a partner at DLA Piper’s Federal Law and Policy group. He isn’t thrilled with Confirmation being aired.

Judy Smith (Kristen Ariza)

The deputy press secretary and special assistant to President George H.W. Bush, Judy Smith was tasked with privately handling the media controversy surrounding Thomas during the hearings.

Where is she now? Interestingly, Smith’s legendary prowess in crisis management was the inspiration behind the popular television show Scandal — the protagonist, Olivia Pope, was modeled after her. She continues to works as an author, television producer, and crisis manager today.

Arlen Specter (Malcolm Gets)

Arlen Specter, then a United States senator from Pennsylvania, served on the Senate Judiciary Committee and assisted in the hearings. Like Hatch and Simpson, he was notoriously aggressive about challenging the validity of Hill’s claims, going so far as to accuse her of “flat-out perjury.”

Where is he now? In 2012, Specter died from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, at the age of 82.

Sonia Jarvis (Kimberly Elise)

Sonia Jarvis was a roommate of Hill’s when she lived in D.C. She gave an affidavit that Thomas had visited their house on one occasion.

Where is she now? Jarvis is a distinguished lecturer at Baruch College, specializing in race, politics, and the media.

The ‘Scandal’ star talks with THR about the behind-the-scenes drama of HBO’s political telefilm, her talks with Anita Hill and what she hopes viewers will take away from the project.
Kerry Washington as Anita Hill in HBO’s ‘Confirmation.’ Courtesy of HBO

The ‘Scandal’ star talks with THR about the behind-the-scenes drama of HBO’s political telefilm, her talks with Anita Hill and what she hopes viewers will take away from the project.
Kerry Washington has high hopes for HBO’s Confirmation.

Premiering Saturday, Confirmation stars Washington as Anita Hill opposite Wendell Pierce as Clarence Thomas and details the explosive 1991 Supreme Court nomination hearings (at which Anita Hill testified) that brought the country to a standstill and forever changed the way people think about sexual harassment, victims’ rights and modern-day race relations.

Academy Award-nominated writer Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) penned the script and executive produced the movie alongside Washington. The movie features an all-star cast that also includes Greg Kinnear as Joe Biden, Eric Stonestreet as lobbyist Ken Duberstein and Jeffrey Wright as Hill’s legal counsel.

Airing weeks after FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story captivated viewers with its exploration of race relations amid the trial, Confirmation has faced early drama from some of the players depicted in the movie who claim that it’s anti-Republican. The Hollywood Reporter talks with Washington about those criticisms, her meetings with Hill and more.
Let’s go back to the beginning of Confirmation. What drew you to Anita Hill’s story?

I was 14 at the time [of the hearings], so a lot of my memories are through my parents’ eyes. I remember being really struck by it because generally we were all on the same page when it came to issues that we talked about. My parents would always talk about political and social issues, and everybody was usually on the same page — whether it was about affirmative action or the right to choose, and this was one of the first moments where I could really see my parents struggling with each other because they were not on the same page. My dad felt one way about watching this African-American man have his career and reputation stripped and maligned publicly by this panel of older white men. And my mother felt equally pulled in the direction of Anita Hill and listening to this professional African-American woman talk about the challenges she faced. I was really struck by my own sense of intersectionality and the awareness of belonging to more than one community and those instances where they may at times be at odds with each other.

As an exec producer on Confirmation, what kind of involvement did Anita Hill have? How much did you talk with her? Did she read the scripts?

In the beginning, we talked to her when we were talking with a lot of people because we talked to people on both sides of the aisle. We talked to people from all different kinds of experiences: journalists, other lawyers, senators, to her. We really tried to do our due diligence and research. [Screenwriter] Susannah Grant did most of the heavy lifting in that area. But as producers, we were all involved in a lot of the interviews. At that point, I was trying to soak up as much information as I could, but I was also holding that information at arm’s length. I was reading her memoirs, but I was also reading Clarence Thomas’ memoir and a lot of books about the period. Part of why we were approaching it in that way was because one of our goals — and our intentions in the very beginning — was to tell as balanced a story as we could. We wanted to take these people who had become ideological, iconic symbols — like Joe Biden, Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill — and uncover the humanity for people so that they weren’t just symbols. But they were complicated, three-dimensional human beings. That had to happen in the writing, in the casting and in the execution of the film. At some point in that process, I turned to my fellow producers and director and said, “Now I have to step away from this, and I have to devote myself to her 150 percent and trust you guys to hold the rest of it.” At that point, I started to engage with her in a more one-on-one way in terms of helping me to develop the character.

How much did you discuss the events that weren’t televised with her — how she felt in certain circumstances, whom she trusted and so on?

All of that was part of our conversation — particularly when I was working on portraying her later in the process. We talked a lot about her feelings as it was all unfolding.

Was there something from those discussions that really surprised you that helped inform your performance in Confirmation?

It’s hard to say. I’m always reluctant to talk about this conversation too much because she’s so guarded and with good reason. But spending time with her helps me to access her and understand her rhythm. But so did studying the hearings themselves. We were so lucky that the story unfolded in a time when people were — almost for the first time — engaged in a 24-hour news cycle. There’s so much footage from the hearings and the press conferences, and I studied and was really inspired by [playwright-actress and Stanford University professor] Anna Deavere Smith [who contributed an essay to Hill and Emma Coleman Jordan’s Race, Gender, and Power in America collection of essays], whom I admire a great deal, and the way that she worked from real video. I used a little of her approach in terms of studying Anita from the footage that we had, again and again.
Looking back on the whole process, is there one scene that really stands out that was challenging for you?

To play somebody at the absolute most stressful, life-changing moment in their life? All of it was. It was funny, when we were talking about it, Anita Hill said, for her, it was a really intense period of days and weeks. I had to live in that space for such an extended period of time. It was really intense.

How did you approach playing her — as someone who had been wronged or as someone who was standing up for what she believed in?

After I read both [Thomas’ and Hill’s] memoirs and a lot of the books about the process and the culture at the time, I went back and read hers again when I started preparing the character. I really admire and respect Anna Deavere Smith, and she has a very specific way of working from raw material. She works almost like an anthropologist or sociologist in terms of interviewing people and recording them and embodying the rhythm of how people speak — so paying attention not only to what people say but how they say it. I tried to use a lot of the video that we had from the hearings and from press conferences and work from Smith’s approach to get inside the rhythm of Anita.

In a larger sense, were you able to tap into anything from Scandal for Confirmation?

One of the reasons why I was really drawn to the character is because she’s so different from Olivia Pope. After five seasons of playing somebody who has so much access and power — who for the most part is always the most powerful person in the room aside from Papa Pope [Joe Morton] — I was drawn to the idea of playing somebody who was in that same environment but at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of access and power.
A few of the politicians depicted in the film have claimed that it’s anti-Republican. What do you say to them?

A lot of that feedback is coming from people who haven’t seen the film, so it’s a typical conversation to have. When you see the film, it’s very clear how much we were respecting and prioritizing the humanity of so many of the players involved and knowing that my own complicated understanding of intersectionality, in terms of gender and race, is part of why I wanted to make the movie. It’s not a propaganda movie. It’s a movie about complicated people in a really complex situation doing the best they could with the tools they had at the time.

We did our due diligence. Susannah was waist-deep in the research and double-checked [it]. It’s one of the reasons I was happy that HBO wanted to make the film, because not only are they invested in protecting it, but they’re invested in protecting the truth and making sure that people aren’t having their lives inappropriately dealt with. I feel confident about the film and about our intentions in making it, but quite honestly, I understand it. When the hearings were going on, people were unhappy and frustrated, and that was then. The reasons why it hasn’t become a public part of our canon of historical national conversation in the way it maybe should be is because it was a difficult thing for people to deal with, and Americans wanted to sweep it under the rug when it was over. The fact that we’re going back and telling this story reignites and honors the importance of these conversations. Of course it’s going to be upsetting to some people — that makes sense. It was upsetting at the time, so it would be upsetting again now.

There have been reports that Joe Biden reached out to HBO, and some adjustments were made — not based directly on his calls but as a whole. What were some of those changes?

I would feel more comfortable having that conversation with Susannah, because she would be able to have that conversation more accurately.

What do you hope viewers walk away with after watching Confirmation?

One of the most important things that comes forward in the film is the importance of our voices in this country. Anita Hill was a very reluctant hero, based on these things that I wasn’t so clear about before doing research on her and how much she did not want to come forward and was put in that position because the information was leaked. But when I think about how it inspired other people to have their voices — that’s moving. I love those moments in the film where Joe Biden, Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill are talking, and all of a sudden you hear the phone start to ring in the congressional offices because that is the moment of the unscripted character. That’s the American people calling in for congressmen to say, “I’m not happy” or “I have an opinion about this, and I need to be heard.” We’re lucky to live in a representational democracy where our government’s job is to represent us. We put them in office, and they’re supposed to represent us. And that’s one of the important reminders in the film: that they can’t do their jobs unless we are showing up with our voices. Unless we are voting, making phone calls and participating in the process, our representational bodies won’t know how to represent us and won’t do their jobs well. We have to be part of the process.
Considering what you now know, do you think Clarence Thomas should have been confirmed to the Supreme Court?

I’m reluctant to answer those questions. There is this idea that I’m making the film for a political agenda. When I saw the Anita documentary a few years ago, I wanted to pull back the onion and know more. I wanted to know about what was happening in those rooms where the cameras weren’t rolling and what was going on for Anita Hill, Joe Biden and Clarence Thomas. My passion was about uncovering the process because that’s where the story was. I’m reluctant to answer those questions because this film is not about my personal politics. It’s about a vital moment in our shared history as a country.

Switching gears to Scandal for a moment — Olivia has killed Andrew Nichols. Does this make her a monster? How much do you know about how this season ends? Will there be a new president?

I know nothing about where the season ends. … I don’t want to say if Olivia is a monster or not because I think that word has a particular context in the Scandal world that is still being revealed to us. I always feel like my job with Olivia is to hold the face of nonjudgment, because I have to be her. I try not to judge her and have ethical judgment calls on what she does. My job is to get inside it and justify it wholeheartedly. So I’m probably the wrong person to ask.

Confirmation airs Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO. Scandal airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.

Republicans have faced the vast majority of campaign finance allegations from CREW in recent months.

Bill Allison

April 11, 2016 — 2:00 AM PDT

For more than a decade, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, has scrutinized and assailed federal agencies and politicians from both parties to root out unethical behavior in government. Over the past two years, however, some of the group’s most influential work has been quietly dropped.

Annual rankings of the “most corrupt” members of Congress and a bi-annual list of the “worst” governors have stopped. A pipeline of in-depth reports on issues ranging from financial markets to timber-industry lobbying has gone dry. The group walked away from a spat over Hillary Clinton’s treatment of e-mails as secretary of state, even after an Inspector General found that CREW’s public records request had been improperly denied.

Many of those projects, according to CREW, were set aside to reorient its focus toward campaign finance violations by political candidates and the outside groups that support them. The shift also coincided with a leadership change in 2014, when CREW, looking to bring on a new board chair with a strong fundraising base, hired David Brock, a Democratic operative with deep ties to liberal donors. That network of contributors has been the force behind a collection of groups that Brock has created to oppose Republicans and conservatives, as well as one devoted to defending Clinton.

Now, CREW shares office space, a board member and fundraising executive with the groups under Brock’s purview, and as a result is intertwined with the kinds of organizations it investigates. Some former staffers say that Brock, who has moved into the vice chairman role, has pulled the watchdog into a partisan agenda and, in doing so, weakened its impact.

CREW says that isn’t the case. “The board membership may change, but we have always maintained the highest level of integrity and absolute independence in the work we do—and that remains the case,” said Jordan Libowitz, the watchdog’s communications director.

Brock, who declined to comment for this story, is the founder of American Bridge 21st Century, a super-PAC that does opposition research on Republicans; an associated foundation; and Media Matters for America, a charitable organization that aims to expose right-wing bias in media. Brock also started Correct the Record, a media rapid-response team that defends Clinton, and has served on the board of Priorities USA, the main super-PAC supporting the former first lady’s 2016 campaign for president.
Founded in 2003 as a federal ethics watchdog, CREW gained a much wider portfolio, unmasking corporate front groups and calling out stock manipulators. The group has gone after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo over his aides’ alleged use of private e-mail accounts to conduct official business, as well as groups founded by billionaire brothers Charles Koch and David Koch over political spending. In one of its biggest victories, CREW won an argument against the administration of George W. Bush to account for and preserve millions of documents that otherwise would have been lost.

By 2013, CREW was filing an average of eight federal lawsuits each year, with a peak of 15 in 2007, public records show. In the nearly two years since Brock arrived in August 2014, the group has filed a total of four. Meanwhile, CREW also mothballed a number of projects related to government transparency, congressional corruption, and so-called Astroturf lobbying campaigns that purport to represent grassroots movements but are primarily the product of a few wealthy donors, a Bloomberg analysis of CREW’s work showed.

“They’re on the back burner,” Libowitz said of the projects. “Our biggest focus is fighting the influence of money on politics, specifically trying to find places where people have violated the law, and file complaints against them.”

So far in this election cycle, CREW has filed about 14 complaints with the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission over alleged tax or campaign finance violations. Just one of those has been against a Democrat. Groups supporting Republican presidential candidates have drawn particular scrutiny. CREW accused Right to Rise USA, the super-PAC that supported Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s failed run, and Conservative Solutions PAC, the super-PAC that backed Senator Marco Rubio, of taking so-called straw man donations from recently formed limited liability corporations that shield donors’ identities.

Louis Mayberg, a co-founder and former board chair of CREW, criticized the group for what he says is uneven targeting of Republicans. Mayberg, who resigned from the CREW’s board in March 2015, said that trend contributed to his decision to step down. “I have no desire to serve on a board of an organization devoted to partisanship,” Mayberg said.

According to Libowitz, CREW’s results shouldn’t be surprising: “The vast majority of dark money spending has come from conservative groups, so it holds to reason that the majority of rule breakers would as well,” the CREW spokesman said, adding that Brock doesn’t tell staffers whom to investigate.
Mayberg said another key factor that encouraged him to depart was the decision in 2015 to back away from the controversy involving Clinton over her use of a private e-mail server while at the State Department, an issue that has dogged her campaign for the White House. When the New York Times reported in March 2015 that Clinton had potentially violated federal laws on preserving government records by using a personal account for work, Anne Weismann, CREW’s former chief counsel who had already been seeking Clinton’s e-mails through public records requests, said she was told to stand down.
“It was made quite clear to me that CREW and I would not be commenting publicly on the issue of Secretary Clinton using a personal e-mail account to conduct agency business,” said Weismann, who also left the group last year. “The fact that we said nothing on that subject says volumes.”
In January, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded in a report that CREW’s petition for Clinton’s e-mails had been improperly denied. CREW has decided not to pursue the matter, said Libowitz, who declined to comment directly on Weismann’s claim. Meanwhile, Brock’s Correct the Record super-PAC has actively rebutted critical reports on Clinton’s use of her private e-mail server.
Formed in 2013 as a subsidiary to American Bridge, Correct the Record’s website says that it is a “strategic research and rapid response team designed to protect Hillary Clinton from baseless attacks.” Its employees work out of the same office that houses Brock’s other groups, including CREW. Correct the Record registered as a super-PAC in June 2015. Its biggest donor so far is Priorities USA, the super-PAC supporting Clinton, which gave it $1 million. Clinton’s campaign kicked in about $276,000.
Correct the Record has been criticized by law experts, including Lawrence Noble of the Campaign Legal Center, for working directly with the Clinton campaign, even though super-PACs are prohibited from coordinating with candidates. Brock’s group has said it can do this because the law only forbids the coordination of expenditures on broadcast and cable advertisements. Correct the Record only publishes political messages on the Internet, an activity the group says is exempt. Correct the Record declined to comment.

“While they certainly push the envelope, they haven’t gone over that line,” Libowitz said of Correct the Record. “Their critics say they’re pushing into a gray area, but we tend to focus more on clear violations” of campaign finance law.

By Kevin Lincoln
In 2015, Jesse Eisenberg acted in his own, well-reviewed Off-Broadway play; starred across from Jason Segel in one of the year’s best movies, The End of the Tour; and published his first book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups. With other artists you might expect a cooling-off, but that hasn’t happened to Eisenberg, one of our most talented and consistent young actors. Based on the box-office returns, there’s a good chance you were leered at by him last weekend as he played Batman v Superman’s villain, Lex Luthor. Next up, he’ll appear in Louder Than Bombs, the intimate, emotionally sophisticated English-language debut of celebrated Norwegian director Joachim Trier. In the movie, which opens April 8, Eisenberg plays Jonah, an anxious new father dealing with the impact of his mother’s death on both himself and his father and brother. Vulture caught up with the 32-year-old actor to discuss appearing in movies both big and small, how he finds his characters in emotion, and whether he’d like to add “filmmaker” to his crowded resume.

What appealed to you about Louder Than Bombs? Were you familiar with Trier’s work before you got involved?
Yeah, I’d written a play that was actually being adapted for a movie, and the producers had sent me some European films because the movie would take place in Poland. One of the movies they sent was [Trier’s] Reprise, and it was absolutely phenomenal, so when I got a script from that director and that writer, I was really interested. What I initially liked was that I thought the character’s behavior was so unusual. I loved having the opportunity to play a role that, over the course of the film, you kind of discover, as opposed to this preconceived idea of the character’s behavior presented in an accessible and clearly explicated way.

The way your character’s story unfolds over the course of the movie is really fascinating. It’s very measured-out.
Yeah, exactly.
One prominent part of the movie is your character’s fatherhood and the legacy of his father’s fatherhood. You’re 32, an age when people start to think about fatherhood. How did you bring your own experience with the dynamics and considerations of parenthood into the making this movie?
I think that this character was probably plagued by his own premature adulthood. He probably was crushed into a position that he was not ready for — and by virtue of the circumstances of the movie, in that he hasn’t had proper closure with tragedy, he reverts back to a sort of adolescent immaturity, neglecting his family, neglecting his new child. I’m sure I have an unfortunate wealth of relatable experiences by virtue of being an actor in very public things — I’m thrust into a spotlight that would probably make anyone uncomfortable. Even if the spotlight is shining brightly and seemingly with good intentions, it’s just uncomfortable. It can be easy and tempting to want to reverse back to a kind of infantilization, and that’s what the character’s going through in the movie. I really liked that it was ambiguous enough for me to impose my own personal feelings on it.

A lot of actors, they reach your level of prestige and exposure and they don’t necessarily go back to those small movies.
My absolute favorite thing to do is to write a play and then, after I finish, do the first reading of it with my friends around the table. That is the most fulfilling acting experience that I could possibly have, with no one watching, and it becomes increasingly uncomfortable as more and more people know about it. The next thing I’m doing is one of my plays in a 400-seat theater on the West End. I will be terrified every night before the play starts, even if 400 people are seeing it, or especially because 400 people are seeing it. That, to me, is what I’m driven by. It just so happens that with Batman v Superman I got to play one of the most interesting characters I assume I’ll ever get to play, in a movie that is probably bigger in scope than I’ll ever be involved with again. And I really hope to play that part again. So I don’t see that big of a difference in my job except when there’s more scrutiny.

You took the characterization of Lex Luthor in an all-new direction. How did you go about developing your version of him?
The movie’s writer, Chris Terrio, who’s absolutely brilliant, created a totally fresh take on this movie villain, writing a role that seems like somebody you might know who is troubled, who is charismatic but also disturbed, and that’s what made it so interesting for me as an actor. It was grounded with an emotional reality, with an eccentricity that seems very modern. That’s what made it really fresh. As an actor, you go into it the way you go into anything else. I was shooting Louder Than Bombs simultaneously, and those experiences were similarly fulfilling. I would wake up at 4 in the morning and contemplate grief. In Louder Than Bombs, my character is grieving over the death of his mother under mysterious circumstances, and in Batman v. Superman, my character is grieving over his bad childhood and that feeling of powerlessness in this city that he runs. My experiences were similar. Now of course, the final products couldn’t look more different, will be seen by a different amount of people, and play in different spaces, and yet my experience is the same. That’s why I think actors like doing both kinds of movies, because the experiences can be the same and you get to continue doing what it is you like to do.

As a writer, how does it compare performing other people’s scripts versus your own? Is there a give-and-take?
I’m increasingly less inclined to meddle because I know the experience of writing a document that’s not going to necessarily feature characters who are 100 percent authentic. At some point, characters and fictional stories are going to do things that are not necessarily logically linked, and the actor’s job then becomes to provide an emotional logic to tie those potential loose ends together. I know that as a writer, occasionally you’re hoping the actor ties up a loose end, and that’s how I feel working on other writers’ work as well. I love the challenge of butting up against something that doesn’t feel exactly natural and trying to use what I learned in acting school to create some reality for it.

Do you ever want to write for the screen or direct?
I’ve written screenplays when I was young, ten years ago, and it was a very frustrating process. Then my book [Bream Gives Me Hiccups] was optioned for a TV series, so I wrote the script for that. That will be the first thing that I do. And I’ll direct it, if only to make sure it maintains the style and tone that I had intended as a writer.

So you’re not dying to get out there and direct movies at this point?
No. I look at somebody like Zack Snyder, who not only draws every frame of his movies but constructs them with things that are nowhere on set, things that have to be drawn in. I don’t have a mind for that. It’s so impressive and I loved watching him work.

You said you would like to play Lex Luthor again. Is that in place yet, or is it up in the air?
I have an ankle bracelet on that’s connected to the Warner Brothers precinct, so forgive me for being evasive.