Fact check: Post falsely links Hillary Clinton and Whitewater scandal with Oklahoma City bombing

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·4 min read
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The claim: Oklahoma City bombing stopped Hillary Clinton indictment in Whitewater scandal

A March 31 Instagram post (direct link, archived link) shows an image of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"Hillary Clinton was to be indicted over the Whitewater scandal four days before documents related to the case were destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing," reads the post's text.

The post generated over 100 likes in less than two weeks. An April 3 tweet with the same claim generated over 4,000 likes.

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Our rating: False

Clinton was not set to be indicted in the Whitewater scandal, nor were any documents related to the case destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing, according to experts, FBI records and news reports.

Clinton was not set to be indicted

The post provides no evidence of this claim, and experts say this long-running conspiracy theory it has no basis in reality.

There is no connection between the Whitewater probe and the Oklahoma City bombing, according to Anne Mattina, a political communication professor at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. Clinton was also never set to be indicted in the Whitewater case, Mattina said.

D.R. Kiewiet, a political science professor at Caltech, said he's not aware of any Whitewater documents being in Oklahoma City, given the investigation was based in another state.

"The Whitewater matter was investigated and adjudicated in Arkansas where the Clintons were living when Bill was governor and where the real estate venture was located ... not in Oklahoma," Kiewiet said.

The Whitewater scandal began in 1978 when Hillary Clinton and then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton borrowed $203,000 with their friends Susan and James McDougal to purchase land in the Ozark Mountains, according to the Washington Post. The group formed the Whitewater Development Corp., intending to build vacation homes.

In 1982, James McDougal purchased a savings and loan association in Arkansas that later collapsed from bad loans, the Washington Post reported. After James McDougal was indicted on federal fraud charges, Justice Department officials investigated the causes of the company's failure, including the Clintons’ involvement in the Whitewater deal.

Fact check: Hillary Clinton has not been indicted, despite viral post to the contrary

But there were no public records of plans to indict Hillary Clinton, Mattina said.

Kenneth Starr, an independent counsel examining Whitewater, subpoenaed Hillary Clinton in 1996 regarding the discovery of Whitewater billing records that were missing for 18 months and found in the Clinton residence, as TIME magazine reported. But that occurred after the bombing, and he ultimately brought no charges against her.

Claims of an Oklahoma City connection have circulated for decades, as the Washington Post reported in 1995 that the government refuted speculation that documents related to Whitewater were destroyed in the bombing.

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was an act of domestic terrorism carried out by former U.S. soldier Timothy McVeigh, who drove a truck filled with explosives to the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City and left it to explode, Mattina said.

The FBI, which amassed more than 3 tons of evidence and followed more than 40,000 investigative leads into the bombing, found that McVeigh had extremist ideologies and that his friend helped build the bomb plot, according to its website. There is no reputable evidence or reporting connecting Hillary Clinton to the case.

In addition, no FBI records from the investigation mention that documents from the Whitewater case were destroyed. The Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management does not list the Department of Justice among the federal agencies that used the Murrah building in a state report, either.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Factcheck.org and AFP Fact Check also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: No link between Whitewater scandal and Oklahoma bombing