Why the Steele Trial Bolstered Willey

The Associated Press account of Steele's trial said it "casts new doubt on the testimony of presidential accuser Kathleen Willey." No, it doesn't. Despite Willey's credibility problems, the case for believing that Clinton at least made a pass at her, as she says (and as he denied under oath), was stronger after the trial than before. Why?

1) Two witnesses came forward to confirm that Willey told them of Clinton's advance the day it supposedly occurred.

2) Steele claims she first learned of the pass during a phone call from Willey as Isikoff was on his way to Steele's house--the same phone call in which Willey supposedly convinced Steele to back Willey up by lying to Isikoff. Phone records introduced at the trial indicated the call in question lasted about a minute--not nearly long enough, prosecutors plausibly argued, for Willey to have both told Steele her story and convinced her to lie about it.

Meanwhile, Steele attorney Eric Dubelier's cross-examination of Willey focused, oddly, on Willey's testimony during a period when she was apparently trying to avoid giving ammunition to Clinton's attackers. Thus, Willey admitted that an early affidavit was drawn up with careful language to "avoid an admission" of Clinton's pass. And in her Paula Jones deposition, Willey had been reluctant to provide details of the grope, saying (probably falsely) that she didn't recall. Was Dubelier suggesting that Willey made up these details later? Then how come she had provided them to Isikoff over six months before, as he reports in his book? If she then later tried to withhold the details to avoid helping those suing Clinton, that would seem to help her credibility as much as it hurts--it shows she was, at least during one period, a reluctant, pro-Clinton witness, not someone consumed with anti-Clinton animus. If Willey's story about being threatened by a mysterious jogger is true, Dubelier's cross-examination is especially perverse: First Willey is intimidated into fudging key details under oath, then her failure to provide those details is used against her.