Tape about old Hillary Clinton sex case rears its ugly head and takes a hard bite out of her thick hide

New headlines like this:  “ Victim: Hillary Clinton ‘took me through hell’ ”

Renewed interest by the likes of ABC and Politico spurred by tape of a Hillary Clinton interview at the time of the rape case  —  and victim’s commenting openly about it for the first time 

Earlier this week, "Friends of Hillary" at the University of Arkansas vainly tried to suppress the tape of Hillary's interview by  Roy Reed

Maggie Haberman on Politico opened her post thus: “The victim in an Arkansas rape case in 1975, whose accused attacker was successfully defended by Hillary Clinton, is speaking out in her first extended interview, coming on the heels of unearthed tapes of the former secretary of State discussing the case....” (See “Victim: Hillary Clinton ‘took me through hell’” by Maggie Haberman, 6/20/14, Politico [http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/hillary-clinton-1975-arkansas-rape-victim-speaks-108124.html]).

From the perspective of a possible presidential run by Hillary, perhaps the most damaging part of  this episode is an old tape of a much younger Hillary Clinton answering questions about the case. Last Sunday the conservative website The Free Beacon published audio tapes from the 1980s, in which Hillary Clinton talked about the case with a reporter, Roy Reed. On that recording, Clinton seemed to indicate that it was her belief that her client, Thomas Alfred Taylor, was guilty of the crime for which he had avoided conviction  —  she’s also shown laughing about it.

Another problem for Ms. Clinton might be that the victim, who is still unnamed, is now questioning the accuracy of some of the “facts” that Ms. Clinton asserted attacking the character and veracity of the complaining victim, which Clinton had put in an affidavit on behalf of her client, the accused rapist.

Oddly, this is not the first time that this case was looked into by the media; the case was explored earlier by Glenn Thrush, who at the time he did his report on the case in 2008 was working for Newsday. Perhaps the tape containing Hillary Clinton’s cavalier laughter and blithe attitude about the case might be what has renewed the interest of some in the media to take another look at the story.  All of that was brought to light last week in a piece in The Washington Free Beacon by Alana Goodman ( See “The Hillary Tapes -  Clinton tells of defense of child rapist in newly unearthed recordings” by Alana Goodman, 6/15/14, Washington Free Beacon [http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-tapes/]).

Since the story of the audio (now contained as a soundtrack on certain videos) of Hillary Clinton first broke a bit of a tempest in a teapot has erupted. The University of Arkansas has gone after the Washington Free Beacon and its reporter Alana Goodman for originally airing the Clinton tapes, based on a few alleged technical violations of its use policy and the forms submitted or not submitted to the U of A library by Goodman (See “Hillary’s People - Column: The tapes they don’t want you to hear” by Matthew Continetti, 6/20/14, Washington Free Beacon [http://freebeacon.com/columns/hillarys-people/]). Even while the Free Beacon’s lawyers took up the fight with the U of A, the audio has appeared and reappeared in videos, blogs and various other media outlets.