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The Clinton Body Count is a conspiracy theory asserting that former U.S. President Bill Clinton and wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have secretly had their political opponents murdered, totaling as many as 50 or more. [1] [2] [3] Many parts of it have been advanced by Newsmax publisher Christopher Ruddy, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others. Such baseless allegations have been circulated since at least 1994, when a film called The Clinton Chronicles , produced by Larry Nichols and promoted by Rev. Jerry Falwell, accused Bill Clinton of multiple crimes including murder. [4] [5]
This conspiracy theory has been discredited in the Congressional Record, [6] the Lakeland Ledger , the Chicago Tribune , Snopes and others, who point to detailed death records, the unusually large circle of associates that a president is likely to have, and the fact that many of the people listed had been misidentified or were still alive. Others had no known link to the Clintons. [7] [8]
The Congressional Record (1994) condemns the list. It cited an article in U.S. News & World Report (August 8, 1994) by Greg Ferguson and David Bowermaster: "Whatever it is, Bill Clinton Likely Did It." According to them, the original list was compiled by lawyer and activist Linda Thompson. Her list was called "The Clinton Body Count: Coincidence or the Kiss of Death?" They wrote that "Thompson admits she has 'no direct evidence' of Clinton killing anyone. Indeed, she says the deaths were probably caused by 'people trying to control the president' but refuses to say who they were." [6]
C. Victor Raiser II was National Finance Co-chairman for Bill Clinton. He died in a plane crash along with his son and three others on July 30, 1992, during a fishing trip. Conspiracy theorists believe the crash to have been deliberately caused, however the National Transportation Safety Board ruled it as an accident, stating: [7] [9] [10]
[The probable cause of the accident was] the pilot's delayed decision in reversing course and his failure to maintain airspeed during the maneuver. Factors related to the accident were: mountainous terrain and a low ceiling.
Mary Mahoney was a former White House intern who, in the early summer of 1997, was gunned down during an attempted robbery inside the Starbucks in the Georgetown suburb of Washington, D.C. where Mahoney was working behind the counter. The robber entered the store and shot Mahoney after she attempted to take his gun. He then shot two Starbucks employees and fled. However, conspiracy theorists believe Mahoney was killed on the orders of the Clintons. [7] [11]
Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993. An autopsy determined that he was shot in the mouth, and no other wounds were found on his body. [12] His death was ruled a suicide by five official investigations, but he remains a subject of conspiracy theories that he was actually murdered by the Clintons for knowing too much. [13]
The unsolved 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staff member Seth Rich prompted conspiracy theorists to speculate that Hillary Clinton arranged his death; the debunked theory was based on a Fox News report, later retracted, that Rich had been responsible for Wikileaks' release of DNC emails during the 2016 United States presidential campaign. [14] [15] Various elements of this theory have been promoted by Julian Assange and prominent right-wing figures like Alex Jones, Newt Gingrich, and Sean Hannity. [16] [17]
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, being held on federal charges of child sex trafficking, was found dead in his cell at the high-security Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on August 10, 2019. [18] An official autopsy later declared the cause of death as a suicide by hanging. [19] His death led to conspiracy theories being relayed on social media, particularly relating to Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump. Hours after Epstein's death, Trump retweeted claims that Epstein's death was related to Clinton, including the hashtag #ClintonBodyCount. [20] [21] Lynne Patton, a Trump appointee at HUD, said "Hillary'd!!" and used the hashtag #VinceFosterPartTwo in an Instagram post about Epstein's death. [22] Political commentator Dinesh D'Souza attempted to use the time he spent in a federal correctional center to lend authority to the conspiracy theory that the Clintons were responsible for Epstein's death. [23]
Reporter Christopher Sign broke the news of a meeting on June 27, 2016, on the Phoenix Sky Harbor tarmac between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The timing of the meeting happened during the 2016 presidential election when then-candidate Hillary Clinton was under scrutiny for how she handled certain emails during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State. [24] Sign was found dead in his Alabama home on June 12, 2021. His death is being investigated as a suicide. [25] Several right-wing figures, including Lauren Boebert, Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, as well as the pro-Trump cable news channel One America News Network, suggested that Sign had been murdered by the Clintons. [26]
Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7, 2021, when gunmen attacked his residence in Pèlerin 5, a district of Pétion-Ville. [27] [28] [29] [30] Martine Moïse, the first lady of Haiti, was hospitalized for wounds sustained during the attack. [31] [32] [33] Some right-wing conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Clintons were involved in Moïse's death, pointing to political controversies regarding aid given to Haiti by the Clinton Foundation, such as "hurricane-proof" classroom trailers that were found to be structurally unsafe and laced with formaldehyde. Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who claim that Donald Trump is secretly waging war against a cabal of child traffickers that includes the Clintons, heavily discussed the idea that they had a hand in the assassination. Discussion of the unfounded claim caused the term "Clintons" to become a top trend on Twitter. [34]
Other persons linked to the Clinton Body Count include:
Dinesh Joseph D'Souza is an Indian-American right-wing political commentator, author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. He has written over a dozen books, several of them New York Times best-sellers.
Charles Joseph Scarborough is an American television host, attorney, political commentator, and former politician who is the co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC with his wife Mika Brzezinski. He previously hosted Scarborough Country on the same network. A former member of the Republican Party, Scarborough served in the United States House of Representatives for Florida's 1st district from 1995 to 2001. Scarborough was also a visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He was named in the 2011 Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world.
Hérard Abraham was a Haitian military officer and politician who served as the acting President of Haiti in 1990, helping to lead its democratic transition.
QAnon is an American political conspiracy theory and political movement. It originated in the American far-right political sphere in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". Those claims have been relayed, developed and supplemented by numerous communities and influencers associated with the movement.
Donald John Trump Jr. is an American political activist, businessman, author, and former television presenter. He is the eldest child of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and his first wife Ivana Trump.
Jovenel Moïse was a Haitian entrepreneur and politician, who served as the 43rd President of Haiti from 2017 until his assassination in 2021. He was sworn in as president in February 2017 after winning the November 2016 election. In 2019, protests and unrest in Haiti became a crisis. In the early morning of 7 July 2021, Moïse was assassinated, and his wife Martine was injured during an attack on their private residence in Pétion-Ville. Claude Joseph took control of the country as acting prime minister following his assassination.
The murder of Seth Rich occurred on July 10, 2016, at 4:20 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Rich died about an hour and a half after being shot twice in the back. The perpetrators were never apprehended; police suspected he had been the victim of an attempted robbery.
Michael Cernovich is an American alt-right social media personality, political commentator, and conspiracy theorist. Though he initially called himself alt-right, he dissociated from the movement after Richard Spencer became its public face. Cernovich describes himself as part of the new right and some have described him as part of the alt-lite. Cernovich has been a regular host of the far-right The Alex Jones Show on InfoWars.
"Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.
Protests began in cities throughout Haiti on 7 July 2018 in response to increased fuel prices. Over time, these protests evolved into demands for the resignation of Jovenel Moïse, the then-president of Haiti. Led by opposition politician Jean-Charles Moïse, protesters stated that their goal to create a transitional government, provide social programs, and prosecute allegedly corrupt officials. Throughout 2019, 2020, and 2021, hundreds of thousands took part in protests calling for the government to resign. On 7 February 2021, supporters of the opposition against the then-incumbent Jovenel Moïse allegedly attempted a coup d'état, leading to 23 arrests, as well as clashes between protestors and police.
On August 10, 2019, guards found the American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein unresponsive in his Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, jail cell, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. After prison guards performed CPR, he was transported in cardiac arrest to the New York Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:39 am. The New York City medical examiner ruled that Epstein's death was a suicide by hanging. Epstein's lawyers challenged the medical examiner's conclusion and opened their own investigation, hiring pathologist Michael Baden.
"Epstein didn't kill himself" is a phrase referring to multiple theories surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein that dispute the official but contentious ruling of suicide by hanging. Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender with connections to powerful and wealthy people such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, and his reported "suicide" led to numerous hypotheses about the nature and cause of his death. The phrase became a now very famous and widely accepted colloquialism as well as an internet meme, gaining traction in November 2019 as more of the circumstances around his death became public. The most common theory asserts that the true cause of his death was homicide, via strangulation, arranged by one or more co-conspirators to silence him. As a result, some people have used the verb "epstein" to refer to the scenario of powerful criminals arranging for people with compromising information to be murdered while having officials rule their deaths as suicides.
Events in the year 2021 in Haiti.
Jovenel Moïse, the president of Haiti, was assassinated on 7 July 2021 at 1 a.m. EDT (UTC−04:00) at his residence. A group of 28 foreign mercenaries, mostly Colombians, are alleged to be responsible for the killing. First Lady Martine Moïse was also shot multiple times in the attack, and was airlifted to the United States for emergency treatment. Later in the day, USGPN killed three of the suspected assassins and arrested 20 more. A manhunt is ongoing for other gunmen as well as the masterminds of the attack. Haitian chief prosecutor Bedford Claude confirmed plans to question Moïse's top bodyguards; none of the president's security guards were killed or injured in the attack.
Martine Marie Étienne Moïse is the former First Lady of Haiti and the widow of President Jovenel Moïse. She served as the country's first lady from February 2017 until the assassination of her husband on 7 July 2021. Moïse was wounded in the same attack at their home in Pétion-Ville.
Ariel Henry is a Haitian neurosurgeon and politician who has served as the acting prime minister of Haiti and the acting president of Haiti since 20 July 2021. He later became involved in a controversy due to his refusal to cooperate with the authorities over his links with Joseph Felix Badio, one of the suspects accused of orchestrating the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on 7 July 2021. Officers who investigated the case suspected Henry was involved with planning the assassination.
John Joël Joseph, also known as Joseph Joel John, is a Haitian politician who was a member of the Senate of Haiti.
Over the weekend, D'Souza tried to leverage his eight months in a federal correctional center to lend authority to the bizarre, evidently Trump-endorsed conspiracy theory that the Clintons might be responsible for Jeffrey Epstein's suicide.
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