R. Emmett Tyrrell reminisces in the American Prowler about A Fat Little Butter Ball:
Senator Torricelli is a political bully who uses political power to do what he is physically impotent to do. As the months have passed since he was severely reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for taking gifts from a former campaign contributor the evidence of his coarseness mounts, for instance, there is the tape showing Torricelli accompanied by a shadowy thug hounding the aforementioned campaign contributor. Doubtless there was more evidence to come before he cut and ran.Stick a fork in him, he's done!
I have had my own experiences with his bully-boy tactics. After The American Spectator published a well-substantiated report in 1998 that the New Jersey senator had received $136,000 in hard money from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group involved in the murder of American servicemen in Iran and in the subsequent takeover of our embassy in Tehran, he threatened us with a libel suit through his agile lawyer Abbe Lowell. I ignored his threat.
When empty threats of libel did not work Torricelli led in ginning up a year-long government investigation of the magazine complete with a grand jury to look into our revelations of the misbehavior of his friend Bill Clinton, another of Lowell's unsuccessful clients. It all began on a gray Sunday morning in Washington on ABC's "This Week With Sam & Cokie." There Torricelli denounced the Spectator, accusing us of money laundering, which is a felony. Then he wrote Attorney General Janet Reno and demanded an investigation. The charges they settled on were witness tampering and threatening murder, the last, perhaps, provoked by our deadly prose. Of course, unlike the Senator and his friends in the Clinton Administration we cooperated fully with the authorities and were completely vindicated. Thus here I am today, a free and happy man, while Torricelli shuffles off into ignominy.
