The Barack Obama campaign is calling a new right-wing Hillary hit-video that features footage of the Illinois senator "trash" and is disavowing any cooperation with the production.
Veteran anti-Clinton activist David N. Bossie has put out a web-based video trailer for his current work in progress, "Hillary," a documentary that "aims to expose the truth about her conflicts in the past and her liberal plot for the future" that leads with footage of Obama criticizing the former First Lady
In a statement to the Huffington Post, the Obama campaign said "Of course Obama did not participate and this representation of his interview with ABC is completely misleading. There is no room in this campaign for this sort of trash."
The clip of Obama shows him criticizing Clinton for "claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out, in which case she is saying she had nothing to do with it." Bossie, president and chairman of Citizens United, a tax-exempt conservative advocacy organization, said he obtained the Obama clip from a third party source, and that the Illinois Senator did not cooperate with Citizens United.
The trailer continues with a compilation of harsh comments about the former First Lady by Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Robert Novak and Dick Morris. Morris, who was hired by Bill Clinton as a political consultant several times in the 1980s and 1990s, but who was fired in the 1996 campaign, is the harshest of the group: "She will make up any story, will lie about anything, as long it serves her purpose at the moment. And the American people are going to catch on to it."
Bossie, reached at a Citizens United Christmas party, declined to provide any details about the documentary, including its completion date or its availability on DVD. Those visiting the web site are offered the chance to "pre-order" a copy at $23.95, plus shipping and handling.
In the mid-1990s, Bossie received widespread publicity for his controversial role in Republican-led congressional investigations of the Clinton administration. Bossie served as a top aide to Representative Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who chaired the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight - a committee which conducted a series of inquiries into Whitewater and other Arkansas-related allegations of scandal -- most of which were eventually disproven.
Citizens United was founded in 1988 by Bossie associate Floyd Brown. Brown orchestrated a television ad that year that publicized the story of Willie Horton, a convicted African-American murderer allowed to go on weekend furloughs from a Massachusetts prison during the administration of Democratic governor Michael S. Dukakis. During one of those furloughs, Horton raped a Maryland woman and tortured her fiancée. The Horton ads are widely considered to have had a decisive role in Dukakis' defeat in the presidential election that year.
Neither Bossie nor Citizens United is known to be currently associated with any presidential candidate.