Well, now we have seen everything in this campaign.
Today Michael Chertoff — who 20 years ago was the lead Republican counsel on the Senate Whitewater Committee and one of the top Clinton adversaries — endorsed Clinton for president.
“I realized we spent a huge amount of time in the ’90s on issues that were much less important than what was brewing in terms of terrorism,” said Chertoff. “Hillary Clinton has good judgment and a strategic vision how to deal with the threats that face us.”
Whitewater was the Benghazi of the 1990s. The Whitewater investigation led Congress to President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The investigation lasted six years, and cost taxpayers more than $50 million, and concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge Bill or Hillary Clinton with any criminal wrongdoing in the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas.
Clinton cast the only vote in the Senate against Chertoff when a year later he was nominated to head the Justice Department’s criminal division. She was also the lone no vote against Chertoff in 2003, when he was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the third circuit.
So it’s remarkable that Chertoff, who was the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary during the George W. Bush presidency, is now in Hillary Clinton’s corner.
“People can go back decades and perhaps criticize some of the judgments that were made,” said Chertoff. “That is very, very insignificant compared to the fundamental issue of how to protect the country.”
He is not alone. Over 100 Republican officials and former members of the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and both Bush administrations have endorsed Clinton. In addition, a variety of newspapers with conservative editorial boards have backed her while slamming Trump as “unfit” “unprepared” a “serial liar” and a “clear and present danger” to the country.
When it comes to Trump, Chertoff says he is too big of a risk for the country.
“Not only did he seem at the debate to lose his temper, but to get up at 3:30 a.m. and reach for your smartphone is to me a hysterical reaction,” said Chertoff. “If you’re president, the button you reach for is not the Twitter button; it’s the nuclear button.”