Stephanopoulos Pretends to be Stunned at Hillary Clinton Corruption Charges

Once a Clinton flak catcher, always a Clinton flak catcher: “The former public face of Bill Clinton’s White House—and current host of ABC News’ This Week—George Stephanopoulos was floored [or at least pretended to be for the cameras — Ed] as two prominent journalists and the Republican Speaker of the House from his Clinton days, Newt Gingrich, laid out for him just how bad the ‘Clinton Cash’ book is for his old bosses,” Matthew Boyle writes at Big Journalism:

“My point is they took money from foreign governments while she was Secretary of State—that is clearly illegal,” Gingrich said. “This is not about politics. It’s illegal. It’s dangerous to America to have foreign governments get in the habit of bribing people who happen to be the husband of the Secretary of State or next president of the United States.”

Halperin then stuck the knife in.

“Here’s why you know this is serious, because almost any Democrat who’s not Clintons’ payroll will tell reporters and others privately that these are serious issues,” he said. “Forget the politics. These are serious issues. The question for me right now is all these donors who gained and all these people who paid President Clinton to give speeches, what kind of communications did they have with people in the government? That may not be a quid pro quo, but everybody knows that a lot of those donations were from people who wanted access to the Clintons.”

And Heilemann twisted it.

“We have examples now where Barack Obama’s administration knew this was a potential problem,” he said. “That’s why they set up the agreement they had with the family—the agreement they had with Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton when she took the job as Secretary of State. There are now several that we know of at this moment—several documented instances—where whether or not it’s illegal they broke their agreement with the administration.

“When you think about the president having the standard of being the most transparent and open administration in history, what the Clintons have done here clearly is not the most transparent and open. I think that whether it’s illegal or not, they violated the spirit of Barack Obama’s presidency.”

Allahpundit-style exit quote: