Hillary Clinton is one of the most recognisable people in the world. After serving as First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and being the first woman nominated by a major party, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t know who Hillary Clinton is. But when you’ve sat on the front lines of history for so long, mingling with the richest and most powerful people in the world, it is almost inevitable that you’ll find yourself wrapped up in a conspiracy or two. So here, we’re going to look at ten conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton.
See Also: 10 Trump Conspiracy Theories You May Have Missed
10 First Victim
Whether you love them or loathe them, there’s no denying that the Clintons have played a major role in American and world history. From Bill’s outstanding record on the economy, to Hillary becoming the first female nominee of a major party, there are plenty of things that the Clintons will be remembered for. And whether they like it or not, the Lewinsky scandal is one of them. Although, if this theory is to be believed, they may not have much of a problem with that.
According to Linda Tripp, the White House employee who secretly taped Lewinsky talking about her relationship with Bill, the scandal was less of a shock to Hillary than we believe.[1] Not only does Tripp claim that Hillary was aware of the affair, she goes even further and says that “every scandal that originated in the Clinton administration was the brainchild of Hillary”.
The apparent logic behind Tripp’s accusations was that the scandal would improve Hillary’s image, making her more relatable and drawing in sympathy from the public. If that was the plan, it certainly didn’t work, as the affair has arguably done more damage to Hillary than either of the people who actually cheated.
9 Chelsea’s Father
Monica Lewinsky is not the only woman Bill has been accused of infidelity with, but she is the most well-known. And while there may be more than a few rumours swirling around about Bill, he’s not the only member of the marriage who is alleged to have strayed from their vows.
According to the likes of Donald Trump and Roger Stone, Hillary was less than faithful as well. Stone even goes so far as to name two of the men Hillary is alleged to have slept with: Vince Foster, and Web Hubbel.[2] While Vince Foster may be a more famous name, it is Web Hubbel who is really at the heart of this theory, as he is purported to be Chelsea’s real father.
Admittedly, Chelsea does resemble Web somewhat, although nowhere near the degree to which she blatantly resembles Bill and Hillary. But a few connections, such as working in Hillary’s law firm, and a possible, oblique reference to him in one of her books,[3] has led Clinton opponents to conclude that he must be the father. The problem with theories like these is that, much like David Icke claiming the moon is both a hologram and an alien spaceship, the people who espouse them often believe things that completely contradict them as well.
8 Hillary the Lesbian
Probably one of the more well-known Hillary conspiracies, the theory that she is gay goes all the way back to her time as First Lady of Arkansas. This theory most likely started as a result of her being an ambitious career-woman in the eighties, when being gay would have been a real spanner in the works of any political career, not least in Arkansas.[4]
The fact that the Clintons only had one child is often used as evidence that their marriage is a sham, as are the rumours of Bill’s frequent dalliances with other women, which many claim are due to the couple’s “open marriage” arrangement. One of these women, Gennifer Flowers, claims that Bill told her that Hillary is bisexual, and has “eaten more pussy” than he had. Another, Dolly Kyle, claimed Bill told her Hillary wanted a baby to distract people from her “lifestyle” and convince everyone that they were a “real couple”. When asked about these rumours on the Howard Stern show,[5] Hillary replied that she had “Never even been tempted”.
7 Hillary 2.0
If you were to ask someone to name the top five most shocking moments of the 2008 or 2012 campaigns, they’d probably struggle to three. Birtherism could qualify, but the most memorable moment of that is probably John McCain shooting down one of his own supporters. Maybe that time Rick Perry forgot the third branch of government he wanted to eliminate? That was funny. If you were to ask the same question about 2016, you’d probably struggle to limit it to 5.
Of the many shocking moments in that campaign, one of the most memorable has to be when Hillary fainted at the 9/11 memorial. To her opponents, this was proof of what they had been saying all along: that she was not in good enough health to serve as President. But apparently seeing her faint wasn’t proof enough, as when Hillary reemerged several hours later, a new theory was posited: that wasn’t the real Hillary.[6]
The idea behind this is that Hillary is so sick, she needs to use a body-double for some public appearances. Proponents of this theory placed photos from that day alongside other photos of Clinton, pointing out apparent discrepancies between features such as her nose, cheekbones, neck, and stomach as evidence that they are two different people.[7] A famous Hillary impersonator even tweeted that she was in New York at the time, but later confirmed she was actually on the West Coast.
6 Unhealthy Hillary
The fainting incident, which is said to have been a result of pneumonia, is far from the only time Hillary’s health has been called into question. When she suffered a concussion in 2012, the theory was that it was faked in order to avoid testifying at the Benghazi hearings. Once she had testified, the theory switched to the concussion being real and Hillary being unfit for office. A blood clot in 2013 then led to speculation that she had suffered neurological damage,[8] again making her ineligible to be President.
Those incidents, combined with the fainting, led to speculation that Hillary could have Parkinson’s disease, or something similar. This was supported by a leaked email that mentioned Provigil, a drug often used by people with Parkinson’s disease. However, the drug is used to treat fatigue, not neuromuscular symptoms, and it is a matter of public record that Barack Obama used it during his Presidency,[9] probably as a way to get more work done. As Hillary is the only nominee in history to release their medical records, this theory stands up about as well as Hillary at the memorial.
5 The Clinton Plant
While a lot of the conspiracy theories surrounding Hillary have common threads, such as being a sex fiend or knocking on death’s door, there is one thread that runs through every single theory out there: it’s all so she can become President.
With Hillary ultimately facing off against Donald Trump, indisputably the most unconventional nominee in history and a magnet for conspiracy theories, it was almost inevitable that the two would star opposite each other in a shared conspiracy. Namely, the theory that Trump was a Clinton plant.[10]
This theory doesn’t require as much stretching of the imagination as many of the others. Quite simply, theorists on the left and right have pointed to the long, friendly, and publically established relationship between the Trumps and the Clintons. They attended his wedding, he donated to their foundation, and they were clearly friends long before they became enemies.
The main piece of evidence cited in support of this theory is a phone call from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump that took place about a month before he entered the campaign. According to the Washington Post,[11] four Trump and one Clinton associate confirmed that Bill used the call to encourage Donald to get more involved in the GOP. Theorists claim the Clintons outright asked him to run a campaign so bad, it would destroy the Republican Party. Obviously, the most entertaining part of this theory is that the plan failed, keeping Hillary from her dream job and forcing Donald to do one of the hardest jobs in the world when he just wanted to be on TV.
4 The Impeachment Plan
As funny as it may be to think that such a grand conspiracy could go so drastically wrong, true conspiracy theorists won’t let themselves be distracted by humour. After all, the best way to convince people that something isn’t an issue is to make them laugh it off. So what if Hillary’s plan didn’t go hilariously wrong? What if this was the plan?
The phone call conspiracy is pretty straightforward: Donald says and does lots of terrible things in the name of the Republican Party, splitting the party in two, and setting those who supported him up for tough reelection bids. Hypothetically, this would cause an identity crisis for the GOP and move it more towards the center, giving Democrats an easy ride for a few years.
But according to one White House source, courtesy of Playboy’s White House Correspondent,[12] Hillary was playing a much longer game. Rather than using candidate Trump to damage the Republican party, she wanted to use President Trump to destroy it. To do this, she colluded with the Russians to ensure that she lost the election, and then pinned it all on Donald. Once the Trump-Russia story was out there, all they had to do was sit back and wait for impeachment. Whether Hillary plans to run again remains to be seen, but if you believe any of this is true, that is the only logical conclusion.
3 The Clinton Body Count
Apart from her theorized lesbianism, the Clinton Body Count is probably the most well-known conspiracy surrounding both Bill and Hillary out there, and yet it hasn’t been discussed on since 2009. The theory has grown a bit since then, and while there is too much to dissect fully here,[13] we can still convey the main points.
The theory kicks off with the aforementioned Vince Foster, one of Hillary’s supposed non-lesbian lovers, who was found dead in a park with a gunshot wound to the head in 1993. Proponents of the Clinton Body Count theory claim that this was not a suicide, but a murder, either to cover up the affair or to prevent Foster from implicating the new First Couple in any crimes.
The subsequent decades are filled with over 50 names of apparent victims of this scheme, ranging from political allies who couldn’t be trusted, to reporters who knew too much. The next major death was that of Seth Rich, a DNC staffer who was shot during an attempted robbery in 2016. Julian Assange hinted that Rich was behind the Wikileaks DNC email leaks, and that he was taken out as punishment. You may remember Sean Hannity pushing this theory,[14] until his advertisers forced him to stop at the request of the Rich family. Rudy Giulianni also floated the theory, but said the family being in “some degree of pain” is no reason to stop.
Finally, the theory has been linked to Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire pedophile that committed suicide in prison in August 2019. With Epstein being a known child-trafficker and elite socialite, it’s not hard to believe he would have some dirt on some very powerful people,[15] and he is known to have socialized with Bill. A number of coincidences, such as the guards not doing their rounds when the suicide occurred, conflicting autopsies, and the security tape being accidentally deleted, have led to further speculation that Epstein’s suicide was just another fake staged by the Clintons.
2 The Sinister Sisters
If you have anything more than a passing interest in US politics, you’re probably already familiar with Hillary’s number one aide, Huma Abedin. Although she is an extremely accomplished careerwoman in her own right, you may remember her as the wife of pedophile Anthony Weiner, the unfortunately named Democrat who kept getting caught up in a myriad of underage sexting scandals. With Huma working as Hillary’s right-hand woman, and Anthony a rising star in the Democratic party, theirs was always rumoured to be a marriage of political convenience. And according to one theory, there may be a reason Anthony sought attention from women other than his wife, as Huma has long been rumoured to be one of Hillary’s lesbian lovers.[16]
This allegation popped up every time Anthony found himself caught up in another sexting scandal, until their eventual divorce in 2017, which led to many jokes about how Huma was “done with Weiner”. But according to famed conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh,[17] there is more to Hillary and Huma’s relationship than pure sexual dynamism.
During one of his radio shows, Rush pointed out that Huma Abedin’s mother is friends with Naglaa Mahoud, widow of then President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi. Morsi was a well-known affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood and, according to Rush, his wife was a prominent player in its female equivalent, the Muslim Sisterhood. For Rush, this was proof enough that Hillary and Huma were agents of the Sisterhood, hellbent on advancing the Islamist agenda. The theory was repeated by a number of Trump supporters during the 2016 campaign, such as Michelle Bachman,[18] but lacked enough substance or source material to really catch on.
1 Secret Police
Perhaps the most memorable “conspiracy” moment in Hillary’s life is one that turned out to be true: the infamous “vast right-wing conspiracy” that Bill was having an affair with a White House intern. Ever since that scandal came to light, Hillary has been roundly criticized for her attempts to discredit the women making accusations against her husband. But according to one of Bill’s former advisers,[19] it didn’t stop there.
Throughout multiple books and interviews, Dick Morris makes reference to what he calls the “secret police”, claiming “Hillary built up a secret police for the purposes of conducting a systematic campaign to intimidate, frighten, threaten, discredit and punish innocent Americans whose only misdeed is their desire to tell the truth”.
The secret police force was apparently made up of private investigators,[20] opposition researchers, and operatives embedded in a number of key agencies, such as the FBI, CIA, and IRS. Their job was to find compromising material on any Clinton critics, so that they could be silenced before dealing any reputational damage to the political power couple. But once again, if this theory does turn out to be true, it looks like it didn’t work out.
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