Snopes Calls Clintons’ Theft Of Silverware From White House “Clerical Mistake.”
The disreputable website Snopes, a fake website that erroneously passes on a site determining what is true or false, called the Clintons’ theft of white house goods when Bill Clinton left office a “clerical mistake” and no proof of items being stolen.
Many Americans shockingly may be too young to even remember this, but when the Clintons were in the White House before, they got quite a bit of heat after they moved out. The reason is because they STOLE allegedly over $200,000 worth of furniture, flatware, dishes, cups, paintings, busts, art, silverware, fine china, rugs and carpets from the White House. Their excuse? They thought it was given to them.
Many of the items they said were gifts from world leaders, hollywood figures, or friends, though some disputed that these were gifts to the US, not the Clintons. But that still left items that are not indispute: prized silver dining sets from the White House that had been there for previous presidents.
The New York Times reported that at least $28,000 worth of items were found to have been earmarked for the White House personal collection, and the Clintons said they would return them. But even after this when pressure did not stop, the Clintons returned another $50,000 worth of items, essentially admitting that they stole these items.
Their post presidential press secretary said this statement in their defense:
A statement issued tonight by James E. Kennedy for Mr. Clinton’s office said that all the chairs, tables, rugs and other furnishings taken for their homes in Washington and Chappaqua, N.Y., had been registered as personal gifts by the White House gift office.
“Every item accepted by the Clintons was identified by the White House gift office as a gift to them,” the statement said, adding that the administrative staff at the White House had “reviewed each of the items against the official list of White House property to ensure every gift was properly handled; none of these items was on that list.”
The park service handles permanent donations, officials said. Personal gifts to the president and his family are recorded separately through the White House gift office.
The statement offered no explanation for the apparent appearance of the gifts — which include sofas, a rug and a kitchen table with chairs — on both lists. Betty Monkman, the White House curator, did not respond to an interview request.
A house committee was convened on the thefts, and found that many items had been undervalued, and it was likely that the Clintons still got away with taking much more than what was known due to bad inventory keeping during their Presidency.
Many left wing outlets have been hesitant to attack the Clintons for this though. The disreputable website Snopes defended them, saying the Clintons couldn’t be called thieves because nobody knows their mindset when they took almost $200,000 worth of items from the White House to furnish their new post presidency home. It could have been an accident.
Snopes has this to say on their website in defense of the Clintons:
“All told, the Clintons paid back or returned approximately $136,000 worth of furniture, artwork, china and other household items they had kept upon leaving office, with $86,000 of that total consisting of personal gifts they would presumably have been allowed to retain but decided to pay for to avoid the appearance of impropriety. About $50,000 of the total comprised items they had removed but were later determined to belong to the government.
To say the latter were “stolen” is to say more than we know — the removal of the questioned items could have been based a clerical mistake — but in any case an accurate accounting of those items’ worth puts it at only a quarter of what has been alleged: $50,000, not $200,000.”
In response to this, we have to ask: If a person left your home though with all of your most expensive furniture and kitchenware, and used it to furnish their own house, would you call that theft or a “clerical mistake?”