Fmr. Obama Adviser Digs Up Alleged Dirt on Clintons, Reveals Their Own Admissions Scam Nearly 20 Years Ago
I never thought I would care about the personal life of Aunt Becky from “Full House” or her influencer daughter. I also never thought I would be living in a time when “influencer” could be an actual profession, but here we are: Actress Lori Loughlin is currently one of the most famous high net-worth individuals who bribed to get their children into an elite college when they had no business being there.
In this case, the child is YouTube shill Olivia Jade, who’s apparently furious that her mother ruined her lucrative career of advertising beauty products on social media. More’s the pity.
As we follow the exploits of Loughlin and other rich people who manipulated test scores and managed to pass their progeny off as rowers or curlers or whatever minor sports they played, let’s not forget that there’s almost always some way to connect any scandal to the Clintons.
Really, it’s like magic. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they managed to find a link between the Clintons and the Chicago Black Sox scandal.
No, Hillary and Bill didn’t pass Chelsea Clinton off as a top recruit in water polo to get her into Stanford back in the day, considering the fact that first children tend to be able to go to whatever university they please.
But, according to the Washington Examiner, the former president did try to use his influence to advance Chelsea’s then-boyfriend into the final selection round for a prestigious scholarship.
“Trina Vargo, a veteran U.S. adviser on Ireland, founded the George J. Mitchell Scholarship in 2000. It was named after the former senator who brokered the talks that led to the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement,” Alana Goodman reported on Thursday.
“Vargo said that Bill Clinton intervened in the first year of the scholarship, when Kane, whose 3.19 grade-point average was much weaker than those of the top candidates, had failed to make the final selection round.”
“President Clinton, who was in his last weeks in the White House, called Mitchell to express his displeasure, according to Vargo in her new book ‘Shenanigans: The U.S.-Ireland Relationship in Uncertain Times.’ He had submitted a letter of recommendation for Kane, who had already landed an internship in the Clinton White House during his relationship with Chelsea.”
Vargo, also a key foreign policy adviser in the Obama administration, said she saw Clinton’s call as an obvious attempt to use the prestige of the office to try to game the system.
“There’s no way to see that as anything other than an attempt to influence a situation that hadn’t been finalized yet,” Vargo told the Examiner.
“In light of the college admissions scandal, I don’t think it’s very unusual for people who have money or influence to use what means they have, whether it’s for their children or friends.
“If he had called George Mitchell after we had selected the twelve finalists just to say that the organization doesn’t know what they’re doing because they didn’t pick him, that would be fine from my perspective,” she said. “The timing … it was meant to influence decisions.”
According to Vargo, Mitchell was uncomfortable with the pressure allegedly being exerted by the outgoing president.
“It was with some uneasiness that he rang me to say that President Clinton had just been onto him and he was very unhappy that the boyfriend of his daughter Chelsea was not among the 20 finalists for a Mitchell Scholarship,” she wrote in her book.
“Mitchell made it clear that he was not asking me to do anything; he just wanted to understand the background and asked what he should say to the president.”
Vargo also described running into Hillary Clinton a month after Kane wasn’t shortlisted during a reception at a reception held by our then-ambassador to Ireland.
“It was immediately clear to me that she knew I was the person she viewed as responsible for Chelsea’s boyfriend not getting the scholarship,” Vargo wrote.
“For those few seconds, her eyes closed to a slit, the way they do when one is unhappy and sizing up a person.”
Again, no money changed hands here and we can safely say that the pressure exerted didn’t seem to make any difference. However, it allegedly happened and was clearly out of order if it did.
Not surprisingly, the Clintons deny it. Bill Clinton’s press secretary, Angel Urena, called the allegations “baseless and patently false.”
Again, this is all alleged, but it’s also worth noting that the book came out just before the admissions scandals started breaking, and almost nobody in the establishment media picked up on the story. I’ll admit that books about the United States’ relationship with Ireland aren’t necessarily the most interesting reads in the world, but surely someone somewhere managed to hear that this little tidbit was tucked away and might be timely given the admissions scandal.
Instead, what we got was this report in the Examiner and pretty much nothing. Nobody decided to even pick up on it after the Examiner reported the alleged phone call, even though they can’t get enough of John Stamos’ on-screen wife getting her YouTube-influencer daughter into USC.
You would think the implications of a former president trying to interfere in a prestigious scholarship on behalf of his daughter’s boyfriend would be of interest to more Americans than the alleged transgressions of Aunt Becky. Apparently not.
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