Former NBC investigative reporter Lisa Myers is traveling the country saying that her network refused to air negative stories about many Democratic politicians in the last decade. One, regarding Hillary's Clinton's sleazy relationship with an Illinois company that sexually harassed nearly 100 women, was a story I helped her on.
Myers had the story ready for broadcast on NBC in 2008, but it never aired. Instead it was relegated to the MSNBC website. The story has disappeared from the MSNBC site, but exists on several other sites, including this one. She was frustrated at the time and never told me why, but it was obvious — her bosses didn't want to attack Hillary Clinton.
Myers' 2008 online story described the harassment.
Sen. Hillary Clinton has declined to return $170,000 in campaign contributions from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment, and whose CEO is a disbarred lawyer with a criminal record, federal campaign records show.
The federal government has accused the Illinois management consulting firm, International Profit Associates, or IPA, of a brazen pattern of sexual harassment including "sexual assaults," "degrading anti-female language" and "obscene suggestions."
In a 2001 lawsuit full of lurid details, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that 103 women employees at IPA were victimized for years. The civil case is ongoing, and IPA vigorously denies the allegations.
"This is by far, hands down, the worst case I've ever experienced," said Diane Smason, one of the EEOC lawyers handling the lawsuit. "Every woman there experienced sex harassment, they were part of a hostile work environment of sex harassment. And this occurred from the top down."
Hillary has been stonewalling this issue since a 2006 front page story in the New York Times outlined Bill and Hillary's close connection to IPA. She told the Times back then she'd consider returning the money. She never did. Then she told Myers in 2008 she'd consider returning the money once the EEOC's sexual harassment case against IPA was resolved. It is 2015, the case has long been resolved, and no money has been returned. Hillary still has the money earned by the company that made a practice of sexual assaulting and harassing dozens of women.
Dozens of politicians, including imprisoned ex-governor Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama, long ago returned IPA money while Hillary stubbornly held it. (The company has since been reconstituted under another name).
Hillary no longer has the "pending lawsuit" excuse for not returning the money. In 2011, the federal EEOC finally defeated IPA in court with an $8 million consent decree awarded to 82 women, in what the government called the longest-running sexual harassment case in EEOC history.
Donna Brazile insists this time Hillary Clinton is going to champion women's issues in her repeat run for President. I wonder if Hlllary will talk about the women of IPA and why $170,000 in campaign contributions and a ride in a corporate jet was more important to her than standing up for them.