I had a feeling that the first claim reported from the new anti-Hillary book was false. Media Matters beat me to checking it and, shockingly enough, it’s not true:

One easily checked claim about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) — which an e-mail newsletter from the right-wing website NewsMax.com hyped as a major revelation from a new book devoted to attacking her — is false.

According to the June 5 edition of “Insider Report,” NewsMax’s e-mail-only newsletter, “NewsMax pundit” John LeBoutillier, a former Republican congressman, recently interviewed author Ed Klein about his book, The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President, which is excerpted in the July issue of Vanity Fair and is to be published by Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin Putnam, June 21.

“LeBoutillier says the book will reveal Hillary’s struggle with New York’s Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to get his seat. Though a Democrat, Moynihan had little use for Hillary,” NewsMax reported.

According to NewsMax, based on an interview with Klein, “LeBoutillier writes” that the book will reveal Moynihan’s alleged resistance to Clinton’s candidacy, supposedly voiced to Clinton at a meeting with Moynihan, who died in 2003, and his wife, Liz, at their Watergate apartment:

Still, a few months later Hillary got what she wanted: the prized photo ‘op’ at the Moynihan’s upstate farm. There, as she announced her candidacy, Pat and Liz Moynihan stood and in effect gave their ‘blessing’ to this out-of-stater who was parachuting in to create her own base for an inevitable White House run.

Oddly, Pat Moynihan never uttered Hillary’s name — not even once — during this event. He could not bring himself to mention Hillary by name — but the press reported his ‘endorsement’ just the same.

But a CNN transcript from July 7, 1999, shows that Moynihan in fact said both “Mrs. Clinton” and “Hillary Clinton” in making his endorsement…

(For part 1 in this series, see this post.)