Trump's new legal attack dog is a longtime GOP hitman and conspiracy-monger
Joe diGenova goes back to the Lewinsky scandal and has been spreading Clinton-FBI conspiracy theories since 2016
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
03.20.2018•8:05 AM
Twenty years ago last month, Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz, then of the Washington Post, published a flattering profile called "The Power Couple at Scandal's Vortex" about a couple of D.C. lawyers who suddenly seemed to be everywhere, making the case against Bill Clinton. The two former prosecutors and conservative activists were named Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, and they were not only ubiquitous on television, they had their hands in every scandal and investigation in Washington, making them, as Kurtz put it, "players, which gives them access to juicy information, which gets them on television, which generates legal business."
Then, as now, there were dozens of lawyers on cable news acting as pundits or analysts and arguing over the details of the latest scandal news. But diGenova and Toensing were unique in that they weren't just giving opinions, they were often representing clients and even worked on retainer for one of the House investigations. From time to time they became personally involved in the scandal themselves, as when Toensing claimed she had been contacted by a Secret Service agent with a story to tell about Clinton and Monica Lewinsky or when diGenova went on TV and insisted that the White House was "digging up dirt" on him and his wife. These cross-connections between media, clients and various investigations gave the two of them information they used to promote their legal business and advance their cause, which was to help Republicans take down Bill Clinton by any means necessary. They are both savvy television performers and ruthless political operatives.
I hadn't heard much about them in the ensuing 20 years, beyond some tepid defenses of convicted former Bush official Scooter Libby, but it stands to reason they would be back in business now that Washington is engulfed in scandal again. And it makes perfect sense that Donald Trump would hire a lawyer with a conspiratorial bent and a strong media presence to defend him when he decided to go to the mat against the Mueller investigation.
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Toensing has been all over this scandal from the beginning, representing former Trump adviser Sam Clovis, former Trump legal spokesman Mark Corallo and a shadowy alleged whistleblower and former FBI informant named William Campbell, who claimed he had information that Hillary Clinton had sold uranium to Russia as secretary of state in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. The Uranium One story played big on Fox News for a while but it didn't catch on since Campbell didn't have any proof and the FBI said he had been an unreliable informant.
Of course, all that could have been part of the Big FBI Conspiracy diGenova has been pushing for several months now, which seems to have gained momentum in the Fox News universe. Before the 2016 election, diGenova went on Laura Ingraham's radio show and claimed that James Comey "threw" the case against Hillary Clinton:
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https://www.salon.com/2018/03/20/trumps-latest-legal-hire-is-a-longtime-gop-hitman-and-conspiracy-monger/
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Has anyone asked him how Comey publicly re-opening the Clinton investigation days before the election supports his grandiose "deep-state," anti-Drumpf conspiracy theory?
