Free Republic

The Hillary Clinton campaign moved Saturday to further distance itself from the re-ignited controversy about President Obama’s birthplace and long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, saying neither Clinton nor the 2008 campaign “ever” questioned the president’s citizenship. Donald Trump, Clinton’s Republican presidential rival, revived the so-called “birther” issue earlier this week when he declined to say definitively whether Obama is a U.S. citizen. The controversy gained momentum Friday when former McClatchy D.C. bureau chief James Asher tweeted that Blumenthal “told me in person” that Obama was born in Kenya. On Saturday, 2016 Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told Fox News: "As...

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term “vast right-wing conspiracy” used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he’s not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the...

New evidence is emerging that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was, in fact, responsible for spreading the original Birther conspiracy theory in 2008, which alleged that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore potentially ineligible for the presidency. Though Hillary Clinton — and the media — furiously denied that charge after it was made by Republican nominee Donald Trump on Friday morning, editor James Asher remembered Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal spreading the rumor. Asher, the former Washington, D.C. bureau chief for McClatchy, tweeted on Thursday evening in response to Hillary Clinton:

The Hillary Clinton campaign moved Saturday to further distance itself from the re-ignited controversy about President Obama’s birthplace and long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, saying neither Clinton nor the 2008 campaign “ever” questioned the president’s citizenship....former McClatchy D.C. bureau chief James Asher tweeted that Blumenthal “told me in person” that Obama was born in Kenya. (emphasis added by Soflofreeper)

Hillary Clinton surrogate Sid Blumenthal personally pitched a reporter on the President Obama “birther” story when she was campaigning for president in 2008, a former Washington reporter said Thursday. The Clinton campaign and the media have consistently refuted Trump’s claim Clinton started the birther movement, which Trump re-upped Friday when he said for the first publicly that he believes Obama was born in the United States. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy,” Trump said, drawing a slew of media fact checks almost immediately. “I finished it.” But former McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher has...

Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008 until the Iowa caucuses, admitted on Friday that a Clinton campaign staffer had, in fact, circulated the Birther conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. and therefore potentially ineligible to serve in the presidency. Doyle made the admission on Twitter, as she responded to former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer. Fleischer said that Clinton’s staff had spread the rumor. Doyle said that was a “lie” — but admitted, in the same tweet, that she had fired the “rogue” staffer who had used email to spread...

Meanwhile, former McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher tweeted Friday that Blumenthal had “told me in person” that Obama was born in Kenya. “During the 2008 Democratic primary, Sid Blumenthal visited the Washington Bureau of McClatchy Co.,” Asher said in an email Friday to McClatchy, noting that he was at the time the investigative editor and in charge of Africa coverage. “During that meeting, Mr. Blumenthal and I met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya. We assigned a reporter to go to...