THE ANTI-CLINTON PUKE FUNNEL IS STILL FUNNELING

Richard Johnson, the New York Post's "Page Six" gossip columnist, published this item Sunday:

Disgraced ex-UN official’s death ‘conveniently timed’

The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster’s 1993 suicide.

Ashe -- who was facing trial for tax fraud -- died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.

Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.

Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. (Ng was not charged with any crime.)

Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fundraising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton.

One source told me, “During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed.”

The tags for this article

FILED UNDER BILL CLINTON, DEATHS, HILLARY CLINTON, UNITED NATIONS

Johnson is doing what his boss wants him to do: He's laundering an anti-Clinton rumor that's been creeping around the darker, dumber corners of the Internet. In those precincts, Ashe is said to have died under mysterious circumstances five days before he was set to testify against Hillary Clinton. (That's the headline at Conservative Tribune: "BREAKING: Official Set to Testify Against Hillary Found Dead." At Hidden Americans: "UN OFFICIAL FOUND DEAD WAS SET TO TESTIFY AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON SAME DAY. 'BARBELL FELL ON HIS NECK.'" At Red Flag News: "Top UN Official Set To Testify Against Hillary Found Dead.")

But Snopes explains that some of the misinformation comes from a known Net fabricator:

... a conspiracy site claimed that Ashe had been slated to testify against Hillary Clinton on the day he conveniently (that is to say, suspiciously) passed away:

In what a new Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today calls a “master incestuous maneuver”, the Bush Crime Family has rushed to the side of Hillary Clinton after a top United Nations official set to testify against her in a US District Court yesterday was found dead by FBI agents who were set to deliver him before a Grand Jury....

According to this report, former UN President John Ashe was scheduled to testify against Hillary Clinton yesterday in a New York City US District Court, but when FBI agents arrived at his Dobbs Ferry, New York, mansion he was found dead....

That claim stemmed from a single source: a blogger working under the nom de plume "Sorcha Faal" who publishes fabricated "news" accounts on the political conspiracy site whatdoesitmean.com....

Prior fabrications from the same site and blogger held that President Obama ordered the military to nuke the city of Charleston, that Rear Admiral Rick Williams was fired because he revealed Obama's purchase of a mansion in Dubai (Williams was actually terminated for misconduct), and that Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama were locked in a potentially conflict-starting battle over the practices of the Monsanto agribusiness corporation.

Snopes tells us that Ashe wasn't scheduled to testify five days before his death and wasn't going to discuss the Clintons in his dealings with the court:

We contacted the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York to verify the claims about Ashe and Clinton. According to the individual with whom we spoke, CNN's report that Ashe's corruption trial was set to begin just five days after his death was not accurate: Ashe was only scheduled to attend some standard pre-trial meetings in the following days.

Moreover, the U.S. District Attorney's spokesperson told us that no portion of Ashe's court case pertained to Hillary Clinton. Not only was he not set to testify against Clinton five days before he died, neither was he slated to do so at any point during the trial.

No matter -- Wingnuts have arleady added Ashe to the Clinton Body Count, which will endure as long as there's a Clinton alive.