Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to upstage President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech with a long Facebook post about her more recent scandal.
"The most important work of my life has been to support and empower women," her post began. "I’ve tried to do so here at home, around the world, and in the organizations I’ve run. I started in my twenties, and four decades later I’m nowhere near being done. I’m proud that it’s the work I’m most associated with, and it remains what I’m most dedicated to.
"So I very much understand the question I’m being asked as to why I let an employee on my 2008 campaign keep his job despite his inappropriate workplace behavior," she wrote.
"The short answer is this," she explained. "If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t."
Clinton explained the circumstances of the sexual harassment claim and why she did what she did.
"I did this because I didn’t think firing him was the best solution to the problem," she continued. "He needed to be punished, change his behavior, and understand why his actions were wrong. The young woman needed to be able to thrive and feel safe. I thought both could happen without him losing his job. I believed the punishment was severe and the message to him unambiguous."
"I also believe in second chances," she added. "I’ve been given second chances and I have given them to others. I want to continue to believe in them. But sometimes they’re squandered. In this case, while there were no further complaints against him for the duration of the campaign, several years after working for me he was terminated from another job for inappropriate behavior. That reoccurrence troubles me greatly, and it alone makes clear that the lesson I hoped he had learned while working for me went unheeded."
Clinton explained how times have changed in the intervening years, and said she reached out to the victim about the incident.
"I was inspired by my conversation with this young woman to express my own thinking on the matter. You may question why it’s taken me time to speak on this at length," she continued. "The answer is simple: I’ve been grappling with this and thinking about how best to share my thoughts. I hope that my doing so will push others to keep having this conversation – to ask and try to answer the hard questions."
"I hope that women will continue to talk and write about their own experiences and that they will continue leading this critical debate, which, done right, will lead to a better, fairer, safer country for us all," Clinton concluded.
The post had received nearly 2,000 shares and 2,000 comments halfway through Trump's speech.
Carlos Garcia
Staff Writer
