Hillary Clinton Flashback: The ‘One Time’ She Didn’t Fight For Women’s Rights Is A Doozy

Hillary Clinton came under a full-scale assault from Real Time with Bill Maher guest Andrew Sullivan, who knocked the former First Lady for her “incompetent” leadership much to the objection of Maher and guest Anne-Marie Slaughter.

Sullivan described her as a “mediocrity,” Mediaite notes, and challenged a stumbling Maher and Slaughter pairing to back up Hillary’s record, which they found difficult to do, especially when Sullivan pointed out her hand in the “disastrous Libya invasion which repeated every mistake that George W. Bush made.”

He also referred to her as a “talent-free hack.”

At one point, Sullivan even attacked Clinton’s record on women’s rights, which Slaughter took offense to, challenging him to find “one time” in the history of Hillary Clinton that she failed to fight for women.

Challenge accepted.

In a previous article from the Washington Free Beacon, Clinton’s controversial role in a 1975 rape case was relived in some detail.

The Inquisitr originally brought you the Beacon‘s findings in a June 2014 report.

The story also appeared in a past article for Newsday, which noted that Hillary Clinton laughed about her time defending a man she knew to be guilty of raping an underage girl.

Even though the perpetrator passed a polygraph, Clinton didn’t buy it, finding it “funny” he passed the lie-detector test, adding that the results “forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.”

“In a July 28, 1975, court affidavit, Clinton wrote that she had been informed the young girl was ’emotionally unstable’ and had a ‘tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.'”

“‘I have also been told by an expert in child psychology that children in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences and that adolescents in disorganized families, such as the complainant’s, are even more prone to exaggerate behavior,’ Clinton said.”

“Clinton said the child had ‘in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body” and that the girl “exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.'”

Clinton also bragged in tapes uncovered by the Beacon about getting the perpetrator off with time served in the county jail and taking advantage of a prosecutor mistake to get the offender — now deceased — back out on the streets.

Ronald D. Rotunda, a professor of legal ethics at Chapman University, noted that even if you don’t buy into the fact Clinton may have used a blame the victim defense against the 12-year-old girl, her decision to talk about the case was ethically questionable.

“You can’t do that,” he said of Clinton’s comments. “Unless the client says, ‘You’re free to tell people that you really think I’m a scumbag, and the only reason I got a lighter sentence is because you’re a really clever lawyer.'”

Clinton’s client, Thomas Alfred Taylor, died in 1992. According to the Free Beacon, the 12-year-old is now 52 and holds ill will towards Hillary Clinton, expressing “deep and abiding hostility” to the Newsday reporter who approached her in 2008 about an interview.

Here’s the actual tape where Clinton brags about her prowess as a defense attorney on the case.

Some have defended Hillary Clinton for giving her client the best defense possible, but critics point out that it doesn’t negate the fact a man Hillary believed to be guilty walked for raping a 12-year-old and she was an integral reason for that.

But what do you think, readers?

Has Hillary Clinton more than made up for this case with her political career, or is her record as a champion for women’s rights questionable or overblown? Sound off in the comments section below.

[Image via JStone / Shutterstock.com]