.jpg)
| ||
|---|---|---|
Personal 40th and 42nd Governor of Arkansas 42nd President of the United States Tenure Appointments Presidential campaigns   | ||
| ||
|---|---|---|
Personal First Lady of Arkansas First Lady of the United States
U.S. Senator from New York U.S. Secretary of State | ||
TheClinton body count is aconspiracy theory centered around the belief that formerU.S. PresidentBill Clinton and his wife, formerU.S. Secretary of StateHillary Clinton, have secretly had their political opponentsmurdered, often made to look likesuicides, totaling as many as 50 or more listed victims.[1][2][3] TheCongressional Record (1994) stated that the compiler of the original list,Linda Thompson, admitted she had "no direct evidence" of Clinton killing anyone. Indeed, she claimed the deaths were probably caused by "people trying to control the president" but refused to say who they were.[4]
Such allegations have been circulated since at least 1994, when a film calledThe Clinton Chronicles, produced byLarry Nichols and promoted byRev. Jerry Falwell, accused Bill Clinton of multiple crimes, including murder.[5][6] Additional promulgators of the conspiracy includeChristopher Ruddy,Donald Trump,[7] andMarjorie Taylor Greene.[8]
Several sources have discredited the conspiracy theory, such as theCongressional Record,[4] theLakeland Ledger, theChicago Tribune,Snopes and others, pointing to detailed death records, the unusually large circle of associates that a president is likely to have, and the fact that many of the people listed had been misidentified or were still alive. Others had no known link to the Clintons.[9][10]
In 1994, Citizens for Honest Government, a California-based conservative group, released the documentaryThe Clinton Chronicles, which featured conservative commentatorLarry Nichols—a former Arkansas state employee under Clinton's governorship who was fired for making calls to theContras from his office—and theRev. Jerry Falwell. The documentary promoted the claim that the Clintons were involved in the deaths of numerous people they had often only loose connections with, includingVince Foster. Falwell heavily promoted the documentary in a series of TV infomercials.[4]
In August 1994, CongressmanAndrew Jacobs Jr. condemned the conspiracy theory in the Congressional Record, in the wake ofThe Clinton Chronicles leading to the conspiracy theory spreading among conservative activists and commentators. Jacobs cited an article inU.S. News & World Report by Greg Ferguson and David Bowermaster titled "Whatever It Is, Bill Clinton Likely Did It", which he inserted into the Record. The article determined that the original list, titled "Clinton Body Count: Coincidence or the Kiss of Death?" and consisting of 24 people, was compiled by lawyer and activistLinda Thompson and submitted to former congressmanWilliam Dannemeyer, who sent the list to congressional leadership and urged hearings. Ferguson and Bowermaster concluded "Thompson admits she has 'no direct evidence' of Clinton killing anyone. Indeed, she says the deaths were probably caused by 'people trying to control the president' but refuses to say who they were."[4]
Don Henry and Kevin Ives, two Arkansas teenagers, were killed and their bodies placed on railroad tracks on August 23, 1987. At the time, the boys' deaths were controversially ruled accidental, but after Kevin Ives' body wasexhumed and a second autopsy performed, the original examiner's ruling was overruled and the cause of death for Kevin Ives and Don Henry was changed from accidental to homicide. Conspiracy theorists, as well as Linda Ives, the mother of Kevin Ives, posit that the boys came upon a drug drop from anairplane, similar toBarry Seal's operations, nearMena and were then murdered. It was alleged inThe Clinton Chronicles that during Bill Clinton's tenure as thegovernor of Arkansas he profited from drug smuggling at theMena Airport and covered up the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the boys.[5][11][12][13][14]
C. Victor Raiser II was National Finance Co-chairman for Bill Clinton. He died in aplane crash along with his son and four others on July 30, 1992, when thede Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver they had chartered for a fishing trip crashed nearDillingham, Alaska.[15] Conspiracy theorists believe the crash to have been deliberately caused, however theNational Transportation Safety Board ruled it as anaccident, stating:[9][16][17]
[The probable cause of the accident was] the pilot's delayed decision in reversing course and his failure to maintain airspeed during the maneuver. Factors related to the accident were: mountainous terrain and alow ceiling.
Ian Stuart Spiro was a commodities broker who shot his family dead in their home and then was found in his car, having committed suicide by cyanide poisoning. The case was officially declared a murder-suicide case at the hands of Spiro due to financial troubles. When he was revealed to be an American and British intelligence liaison, numerous conspiracy theories came about surrounding the families’ deaths, including involving the Clintons.
Mary Mahoney was a formerWhite House intern who, in the early summer of 1997, was gunned down during an attempted robbery inside theStarbucks in theGeorgetown neighborhood ofWashington, D.C. where Mahoney was working behind the counter. The robber entered the store and shot Mahoney after she attempted to take his gun. He then shot two Starbucks employees and fled. However, conspiracy theorists believe Mahoney was killed on the orders of the Clintons.[9][18]
Deputy White House counselVince Foster was found dead inFort Marcy Park inVirginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993. Anautopsy determined that he was shot in the mouth, and no other wounds were found on his body.[19] His death was ruled asuicide by five official investigations, but he remains a subject ofconspiracy theories that he was actually murdered by the Clintons for knowing too much.[20]
Jerry Parks, head of security for the Clinton headquarters during his presidential campaign in 1992,[21] was killed on September 26, 1993, as he left a Mexican restaurant at the edge ofLittle Rock, Arkansas, by a man in another car that shot him ten times using a9mm handgun. Parks’ son, Gary, asserted that his father collected a secret file of Clinton's "peccadilloes", and that his father was using the file to try to blackmail the Clinton campaign.[5][22]
Edward Eugene Willey, Jr. was a Clinton fundraiser whose wife,Kathleen Willey, alleged on theCBS news magazine60 Minutes that Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her on November 29, 1993. Kathleen also testified on thePaula Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton. Edward was found dead in the Virginia woods, and his death was ruled a suicide.[9][23][24]
Ron Brown, who served as theSecretary of Commerce during the first term of President Bill Clinton. Prior to this he was chairman of theDemocratic National Committee. Brown had been under investigation by an independent counsel for theCommerce Department trade mission controversy and was a material witness, who had been noticed to testify, inJudicial Watch's lawsuit against the Clinton Commerce Department.[25][26][27] He and 34 others died in the1996 Croatia USAF CT-43 crash.[28][24]
Jim McDougal, a financial partner of the Clintons in the real estate venture that led to theWhitewater scandal, died of a heart attack at theFederal Correctional Facility inFort Worth, Texas, on March 8, 1998.[3]
John F. Kennedy Jr., who was, according to polls, the most popular Democrat inNew York, was reportedly considering a run for the seat of retiring Sen.Daniel Moynihan in the2000 United States Senate election in New York[29] but died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. Hillary Clinton was elected to Moynihan's vacated seat on November 7, 2000.[30][31]
The unsolved 2016 murder ofDemocratic National Committee staff member Seth Rich prompted conspiracy theorists to speculate that Hillary Clinton arranged his death; the theory was based on a debunked Fox News report, later retracted, that Rich had been responsible forWikileaks' release of DNC emails during the2016 United States presidential campaign.[32][33][34] Various elements of this theory have been promoted byJulian Assange and prominent right-wing figures likeAlex Jones,Newt Gingrich, andSean Hannity.[35][36]
Victor Thorn, an anti-government conspiracy theorist and author of three books accusing the Clintons of involvement in murder and drug trafficking,[37][38] died in 2016 from a self-inflicted gunshot. Proponents of the conspiracy theory, including political consultantRoger Stone, claimed that Thorn had been murdered for his attacks on the Clintons.[39] Both Thorn's family andAmerican Free Press, a right-wing newspaper that Thorn worked for, reported that Thorn had killed himself.[40]
Shawn Lucas, aprocess server in Washington, D.C., served the Democratic National Committee with a lawsuit fromBernie Sanders alleging that the DNC had committedelectoral fraud to ensure that Hillary Clinton defeated Sanders in the2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries. On August 2 2016, Lucas was found dead at his home, which investigators stated was caused by the "combined adverse effects offentanyl,cyclobenzaprine, andmitragynine".[41] Lucas's minor role in the lawsuit against the DNC, combined with the fact that his cause of death was not released to the public for several months, led to proponents of the theory suggesting that he had in fact been murdered. According toSnopes, many internet users who supported the murder theory falsely claimed that Lucas was the "lead attorney" in the DNC lawsuit.[42] Some also tried to connect Lucas's death to that of Seth Rich (see above).[41]
Convicted sex offenderJeffrey Epstein, being held on federal charges ofchild sex trafficking, wasfound dead in his cell at the high-securityMetropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on August 10, 2019.[43] An official autopsy later declared the cause of death as asuicide by hanging.[44] His death led toconspiracy theories being relayed on social media, particularly relating to Bill Clinton and PresidentDonald Trump. Hours after Epstein's death, Trump retweeted claims that Epstein's death was related to Clinton, including thehashtag #ClintonBodyCount.[45][46]Lynne Patton, a Trump appointee atHUD, said "Hillary'd!!" and used the hashtag #VinceFosterPartTwo in an Instagram post about Epstein's death.[47] Conspiracy theoristDinesh D'Souza attempted to use the time he spent in a federal correctional center to lend authority to the conspiracy theory that the Clintons were responsible for Epstein's death.[48]
In May 2025, a White House press briefing includedZero Hedge's Liam Cosgrove, where he connected Epstein and the body count conspiracy theory.[49]
Reporter Christopher Sign broke the news of a meeting on June 27, 2016, on the Phoenix Sky Harbor tarmac between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney GeneralLoretta Lynch. The timing of the meeting happened during the 2016 presidential election when then-candidate Hillary Clinton was under scrutiny forhow she handled certain emails during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State.[50] Sign was found dead in his Alabama home on June 12, 2021, and his death was investigated as a suicide.[51] Several right-wing figures, includingLauren Boebert,Dan Bongino andCharlie Kirk, as well as the pro-Trump cable channelOne America News Network, suggested that Sign had been murdered by the Clintons.[52]
Los Angeles Lakers basketballerKobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash alongside eight others on January 26, 2020. Members of theQAnon movement claimed that the crash had been engineered to kill Bryant in order to prevent him from exposing financial misconduct by the Clintons.[53] This claim was based on aFacebook post in which Bryant allegedly threatened the release of "information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton".PolitiFact reported that no such post existed and that the claim was ahoax.[54]
According to theNational Transportation Safety Board, the crash that killed Bryant was caused when the helicopter's pilot flew into low cloud and lost control.[55]
Haitian presidentJovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7, 2021, when gunmen attacked his residence in Pèlerin 5, a district ofPétion-Ville.[56][57][58][59]Martine Moïse, thefirst lady of Haiti, was hospitalized for wounds sustained during the attack.[60][61][62] Some right-wing conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Clintons were involved in Moïse's death, pointing to political controversies regarding aid given toHaiti by theClinton Foundation, such as "hurricane-proof" classroom trailers that were found to be structurally unsafe and laced withformaldehyde. Followers of theQAnon conspiracy theory, who claim that Donald Trump is secretly waging war against acabal ofchild traffickers that includes the Clintons, heavily discussed the idea that they had a hand in the assassination. Discussion of the unfounded claim caused the term "Clintons" to become a top trend onTwitter.[63]
Mark Middleton was a businessman who served as a special adviser to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.[64] He died by suicide inPerry County, Arkansas on May 7, 2022 with a shotgun found near his dead body. His family was harassed by conspiracy theorists after his death.[64]
Fabricated screenshots of tweets stating "I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton." that were supposedly sent by figures such as celebrity chefAnthony Bourdain,[65] basketball playerKobe Bryant,[66] Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg,[67][68] former Japanese prime ministerShinzo Abe[69][70] andQueen Elizabeth II[71] prior to their deaths have appeared on social media.
.jpg)
.jpg)
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Over the weekend, D'Souza tried to leverage his eight months in a federal correctional center to lend authority to the bizarre, evidently Trump-endorsed conspiracy theory that the Clintons might be responsible for Jeffrey Epstein's suicide.