Hillary Clinton behind Lewinsky essay?

Lynne Cheney, the wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney (R), said late Tuesday that she thinks Hillary Clinton is behind Monica Lewinsky’s new essay in Vanity Fair.

“I really wonder if this isn’t an effort on the Clintons’ part to get that story out of the way,” Cheney said on Fox News Tuesday night. “Would Vanity Fair publish anything about Monica Lewinsky that Hillary Clinton didn’t want in Vanity Fair?”

Excerpts of an essay by Lewinsky, breaking her silence, caused a stir when they were released Tuesday.

{mosads}Lewinsky goes out of her way to say that the Clintons are not pressuring her.

“The buzz in some circles has been that the Clintons must have paid me off; why else would I have refrained from speaking out?” she writes. “I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.”

Cheney pointed out that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a possible 2016 opponent of Clinton’s, has been going after former President Bill Clinton as a “sexual predator.”

“It’s happened at a time when Rand Paul has been criticizing the Clintons,” Cheney said. “It’s happened at a time when Hillary’s getting wrapped up to run, getting it out of the way so we can say one more time, ‘It’s old news,’ seems to me like a strategy or a tactic perhaps.”

Lewinsky says that she was spurred to write after the 2010 incident in which a Rutgers freshman committed suicide after a leaked video showed him kissing another man.

“My own suffering took on a different meaning,” Lewinsky writes. “Perhaps by sharing my story, I reasoned, I might be able to help others in their darkest moments of humiliation.”