A memoir by Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese dissident whom Hillary Clinton has repeatedly claimed to have rescued in 2012, will be released next month.
As Clinton tells the story, she made a “hard choice”—even going so far as to call the rescue a “James Bond-ish kind of activity”—to give Chen refuge in the U.S., insisting that’s “what Chen said he wanted every step of the way,” in her book.
Chen tells a different story, though.
In fact, his memoir will say that’s the opposite of what he wanted and calls out Clinton and Obama “for ‘giving in’ to Chinese negotiators.” The UK’s Telegraph has more:
Far from having his wishes respected, Mr Chen described how he was relentlessly “pressured to leave” the embassy for a Beijing hospital and forced to accept an “absurdly inadequate” deal on pain of the Chinese government accusing him of treason.
“What troubled me most at the time was this: when negotiating with a government run by hooligans, the country that most consistently advocated for democracy, freedom, and universal human rights had simply given in,” he wrote.
But while Clinton hides from the press potentially through the summer, no one will have a chance to ask her why Chen’s account flatly contradicts her own—a story she directly profited from by including it in her book.