![]() ![]() ![]() He was a central player in what the magazine called "The Arkansas Project," a dirt-digging operation funded by a Republican billionaire. When Brock worked as an investigative reporter for the Spectator, his stories stoked the scandals that ended up dogging the Clintons for years. Still, a sign outside the Clinton School's double doors - "Welcome David Brock"- is probably not one he thought he'd ever see. "It's all private and it's going to stay that way."Ī profile of Brock in the New York Times, which sat on the front page of newspaper's site the morning before the speech, seemed to make complete the transformation from political hit man to protector. "It's something that I never really get into with people," he said in an interview after his speech. Brock is wary to discuss his personal relationship with Bill or Hillary Clinton. What remains unclear is how those friendships started and flourished, even after the public apologies Brock made, first in Esquire magazine and later in his book, Blinded by the Right. David Pryor, the former senator and Arkansas governor, also made an appearance at the event.īrock has also developed relationships with both Clintons. Don Ernst, who worked for Clinton in the governor's office, took notes as Brock spoke. Marsha Scott, a former White House aide during the Clinton years, sat with Paul Berry, a Little Rock lobbyist and longtime Clinton supporters, in the front row. For reporters looking for a comment on a political story about Clinton, better to go to Correct the Record than to Clinton's actual communications staff, who largely ignore requests from the press or respond with the great restraint.īrock is also friends with a number of prominent donors these days, including Steve Bing and Susie Tompkins Buell, one of the people closest to Hillary Clinton.Īnd on Tuesday, he spoke to a room full of old Clinton associates. When a close Clinton confidante, Minyon Moore, was linked to a federal campaign finance violations case last week, it was Brock's group that defended Moore. While running his research-focused group, Brock sits on the board of Priorities USA Action, the super PAC planning to fund Clinton's campaign with high-dollar contributions, and he serves as an advisor to Ready for Hillary, another PAC set on building Clinton a vast list of supporters. In the network of outside groups coalescing around Clinton's possible candidacy, Brock is the common link. In the last year, Brock has, oddly enough, become one of the most accessible figures in Hillary Clinton's orbit, emerging as a de facto spokesperson for her campaign-in-waiting through his many roles. On Tuesday, Brock returned to Arkansas as an even stronger advocate for them. "All in the service of one goal: to make sure that Bill and Hillary Clinton would never make it to the White House." When Bill and Hillary were on the rise, Brock was at the Capital bar, "plotting a campaign of dirty tricks," as he put it in his speech. That a drink shared between Lindsey, Rutherford, and Brock seemed normal enough highlights just how much - how drastically - Brock's orientation to the Clintons has shifted since the '90s. With Brock this time were staffers from Correct the Record, a group he founded last year to respond to attacks on Clinton as she decides whether to run for president. The night before, Brock met Lindsey and Skip Rutherford, the dean of the Clinton School, for the first time at the Capital Hotel, the bar where he once worked stories. "Obviously, I share his enthusiasm for Secretary Clinton." "He said all the right things, I thought," he said in a brief interview after the speech. ![]() Lindsey, whose office overlooks the main floor of the Clinton School where Brock delivered his speech, remembers those times as painful - a fact he acknowledged on Tuesday.īut like most friends of the Clintons today, Lindsey now sees Brock differently. Lindsey, a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the chairman of their family foundation, was one of about 200 people who came to the Clinton School of Public Service on Tuesday afternoon to see David Brock's return to Little Rock.īack in the state for the first time in 19 years, the 51-year-old Brock delivered a speech about his conversion from a fierce Clinton antagonist to a central player in the bid to put Hillary Clinton back in the White House.Īs a former counsel to the Clinton administration, Lindsey lived through the scandals Brock helped ignite two decades ago in the pages of the conservative magazine, the American Spectator. Alone on the second-floor balcony, his whicker chair turned to face the podium below, Bruce Lindsey watched the strange homecoming of an old political adversary. ![]()
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