For many, it’s Ryan Murphy’s Impeachment: American Crime Story which aired eight months ago on FX (and was a long-awaited disappointment, speaking for myself). For others, it’s emails, Benghazi, failed presidential campaigns, or Jeffrey Epstein. But is it possible that beneath a veneer of power and influence amassed over decades there’s something more sinister at work? 

You can find it entrenched on obscure online forums and threads, and even on Twitter. To some, it’s a macabre joke, to others a conspiracy theory desperately forged by the right-wing, and for many, it’s the gospel truth. Whichever way you slice it though, eventually we’ll have to ask ourselves what exactly is going on…because 57 people from Bill and Hillary Clinton’s “inner circle” have died in exceedingly strange circumstances in the last 30 years. 

Where It Began

The Clintons have been a bulwark of Democratic politics since the late 1970s, when Bill was attorney general of Arkansas, later governor, and then elected the 42nd president. As most of us know, Hillary was previously a senator for the state of New York, former first lady, secretary of state, and candidate for president in 2016. Neither of their careers has been without scandal, though – Bill’s infamous sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and sexual assault allegations levied against him by Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick eventually led to his impeachment in 1998, after he was found guilty by the House of obstruction of justice and lying under oath.

The early to mid-1990s is where accusations and investigations against the Clintons and the mysterious deaths of their well-connected associates really began, and most of it originated with The Clinton Chronicles, a documentary released in 1994 and produced by an organization out of California called Citizens for an Honest Government. The documentary, which was heavily promoted by political commentator Larry Nichols and Rev. Jerry Falwell, only distributed around 300,000 copies.

"The Clinton Chronicles" first suggested the Clintons’ association with the odd deaths of individuals in their inner circle.

Though it has since been labeled a “conspiracy theory” and even “anti-Clinton propaganda,” The Clinton Chronicles, which specifically lobbied allegations of gross criminal behavior against Bill like sexual assault, drug running and money laundering, was really the first source to openly introduce the concept of the Clintons’ possible association with the odd or unexplained deaths of individuals within their inner circle. The documentary specifically covered the apparent suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster, who grew up across the street from Bill in Little Rock and shot himself in a park in 1993 (though his fingerprints were never found on the weapon, which detractors have long pointed to as evidence of outside involvement). 

The Clinton List

Sometimes called the Clinton List or the Clinton Body Count, a quick search online (depending on your browser, of course) yields a whole host of pretty intriguing results. Though Vince Foster and Clinton fundraising guru Ed Willey were likely the first suicides the List took notice of, they weren’t the last. Additionally, disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s less-than-credible suicide is probably the most famous one to be associated with the Clintons, but it certainly isn’t the only one.

Forbidden History on Twitter summarizes the Body Count succinctly: of the 57 people on the List, “15 of them committed suicide, eight died in car and plane crashes, and 14 were killed under mysterious circumstances.” A post on the Reddit thread r/conspiracy dives into the List more in-depth, specifically in naming almost 50 individuals, their connections to the Clintons, and their cause of death. As part of the pair’s inner circle the majority of them had potentially damning information to share, and even those who didn’t plan to come forward and share their inside knowledge were part of Clinton’s attorney general, gubernatorial, or presidential administration, or connected intimately with those who were.

For example, of the 57 names, 11 men were all former Clinton bodyguards. Another, John Ashe (former head of the UN General Assembly), died from a crushed windpipe while lifting weights at home. One man, James Milan, was decapitated – though “the Coroner ruled his death was due to ‘natural causes.’” Another young woman, who was murdered at a Starbucks in Georgetown, was a former White House intern who was allegedly going to release her accounts of sexual harassment during her time in the White House before she was killed. 

Of the 57 names, 11 men were all former Clinton bodyguards.

Ron Brown – a former DNC chairman – was said to have died in a plane crash, yet injuries found on his skull were consistent with gunshot wounds. (Brown was being investigated at the time and allegedly willing to make a deal with prosecutors.) Jerry Parks, former head of the couple’s security team in Arkansas, was allegedly compiling a dossier of information on the Clintons when he was shot at an intersection in Little Rock. Others, including James McDougal, James Wilson, and Jon Parnell Walker, all had ties to the Whitewater real estate scandal.

Coincidence or Not? 

The List obviously has its proponents, but it isn’t without its detractors. The fact-checking site Snopes, once the go-to for finding out what was fact or fiction in our culture, unsurprisingly denounces the theory as something that’s only held by right-wing nut jobs. (It should be noted though that Snopes isn’t without its shadiness either, far from it in fact).

The main thesis behind disapproving the existence of such a connection between the Clintons and the demise of so, so many individuals who were connected to them and potentially threatened their status seems to be that it would be downright impossible to get away with this kind of crime, and no one is above the law, etc. 

But look at the state of things as they stand right now in our country. The justice system has been given the responsibility of uncovering the individual behind the Supreme Court draft opinion leak, yet they're more invested in delving into Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Pfizer data, which they wanted to keep concealed for an additional 75 years, has been released and raises more questions than answers – yet it’s unlikely anyone culpable for the last two years of madness will ever be charged with anything.

Closing Thoughts

Is there anything in our society that holds individuals truly accountable for their offenses regardless of their status? It’s hard to say. But returning to our initial topic – are all these names on the list a coincidence, or not? If not, is it really so ludicrous to suggest that our society will never hold the powerful and influential answerable for their crimes?

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Nine years ago, I was an advocate for girls and women who thought outside of the box. I had grown tired of the relentless cultural narrative that painted girls as perpetual victims: less than, held back, oppressed by some invisible force. That story wasn’t empowering; it was self-fulfilling. So I did something about it. I wrote a children’s book designed to help girls reject the victimhood mentality and embrace their own strength and agency. To my surprise, it found an audience. It caught the attention of people in D.C. and even a few in Hollywood who were looking for fresh voices.

At the time, I was beginning to shift my focus toward the challenges facing boys and men. A mutual friend suggested I send my books to Justin Baldoni, the actor who had become a public champion for girls and women. The idea appealed to me: a man standing up for girls, a woman standing up for boys. It felt like the kind of cross-gender collaboration the culture desperately needed. I mailed him the books. He responded enthusiastically and promoted them on his Instagram. I was grateful. At that moment, I believed Justin Baldoni was exactly what he appeared to be: a good man genuinely committed to equality.

Fast-forward to the past couple years and the very public controversy between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively. Like millions of others, I've followed the allegations of sexual harassment and a toxic on-set environment. My first instinct was disbelief. I had experienced only professionalism and kindness from him. But emotional intelligence requires us to understand that one person’s positive experience doesn’t invalidate another’s negative one. I began to wonder whether I had been taken in by the disingenuous “male feminist”—the man who wears his support for women like a badge, only to use it as cover for something darker.

The man I once saw as an ally now looked, at least in part, like the embodiment of the warning I later came to write about: beware the feminist man. He, like others, may be a specific type of misogynist.

As someone who now spends most of my professional life advocating for boys and men, I work across the political and ideological spectrum. I don’t need perfect agreement on every issue before I’ll collaborate with someone. What matters is the shared recognition that boys and men are in crisis—educationally, emotionally, economically—and that ignoring their struggles helps no one. Yet I keep encountering a particular type of man in these circles: the self-described feminist economist or thought leader who will say, “Of course we still have so much work to do for women to reach economic parity with men,” before pivoting to the boys-and-men conversation.

They measure female worth by how closely it mirrors the male career trajectory.

Every time I hear that phrase—“economic parity”—I cringe. Not because I want women to earn less or chain them to a stove. I want women to thrive in their choices. But the framing reveals something deeper and more insidious. The reason we don’t have economic parity is because of motherhood. These men, who believe they’re warriors for women, are actually devaluing womanhood itself. They measure female worth by how closely it mirrors the male career trajectory. Motherhood, the unique biological and emotional capacity that women alone possess, gets treated as an inconvenient interruption to be minimized, outsourced, or delayed indefinitely in the name of closing the wage gap. In their worldview, a woman’s highest value is achieved by acting like a man: competing on male terms, in male timelines, with male priorities. They never stop to ask whether the trade-off is worth it, or whether society might be richer if we valued women precisely for the things men can’t do.

I've had these conversations directly with these men. They grow defensive. They insist they’re being progressive. They don’t seem to hear me when I say that true gender equality isn't about pretending the sexes are identical. It’s about valuing the sexes equally in their beautiful, complementary differences. I believe that the war on womanhood and motherhood these men help perpetuate fuels the boys-and-men crisis they claim to fight. It’s one of its primary drivers. When motherhood is systematically devalued, boys and girls are pitted against each other, and boys and men’s issues are put on the back burner to help girls and women flourish academically and professionally. Boys grow up without a clear vision of what respected masculinity and femininity looks like. Girls grow up believing their bodies and their deepest desires are obstacles to success. Everyone loses.

Online, the pattern is even clearer. I've kept my DMs open since the beginning of my public work. Men—regular, everyday men—have never sent me disrespectful or inappropriate messages. Not once. I believe that’s because I show men basic respect, and respect is almost always returned. Imagine how different our culture would be if we all treated men with respect.

There’s one group that reliably fills my inbox with venom: feminist men.

But there’s one group that reliably fills my inbox with venom: feminist men. The messages are often vicious, sometimes even sexually degrading. They call me a “sock puppet”—a crude way of implying I’m merely a mouthpiece for male interests (some even suggesting a sock over male anatomy), as if a woman can’t think for herself unless she parrots feminist dogma. They label me a “pick-me,” suggesting that any opinion I hold that diverges from theirs must be a desperate bid for male approval. The irony is staggering. These men, who pat themselves on the back for being “enlightened allies,” reveal themselves to be the most disturbing misogynists I encounter. They can’t tolerate a woman who refuses to let them define what her interests should be. In their minds, a woman who values motherhood, who warns other women about the very real costs of delaying family formation, who dares to say that boys and men matter too, must be silenced or shamed.

Just this month, I published a deeply personal essay for the Institute for Family Studies. It was a continuation of themes I've explored in my Evie pieces: a candid warning to young women from someone who waited too long to have children. I’m not telling anyone how to live. I’m simply offering my experience. Love, marriage, and children were part of my dream, but it was too late. Society fed me the lie that forty is the new thirty, that career must come first, that fertility is optional and endlessly postponable. I shared my story not to scold, but to spare others the grief of discovering too late that some doors close.

Almost immediately, journalist Matt Yglesias wrote a piece titled “Yelling at ambitious young women won't boost marriage.” He mentioned my essay, framing it as yet another example of shaming, and suggested it’s men we need to shame for the lack of marriages today. He wrote that “Lisa Britton offers herself as an example of a 'cautionary tale of what happens when you put family on the back burner for too long,' leaving her childless and unmarried in her late 30s.” The article positioned my vulnerable testimony not in a positive light but as part of a chorus of scolds. I had described my experience in respectful and honest terms. He turned it into a woman “yelling” because he didn’t like my message.

They can’t tolerate a woman who refuses to let them define what her interests should be.

Here was a man casting himself as the protector of ambitious young women—protecting them, ironically, from the uncomfortable truth—while valuing economic output over the lived experience of a woman speaking honestly about womanhood and motherhood. He was jumping on the bandwagon, again suggesting to women that their ambition is noble if it follows the male script, and that any voice, including a woman’s who is speaking from experience, urging them to consider the risks and the trade-offs, is the enemy.

For decades, feminist ideology has claimed to speak for women while systematically devaluing the very things that make us women. By insisting our value lies in how closely we can emulate men—our earning power, our career ladders, our emotional detachment from family—feminism has practiced a peculiar form of misogyny. The feminist man who parrots that script is not our ally. He is its most eager foot soldier bashing womanhood.

True equality doesn’t require us to erase sex differences. It requires us to stop punishing women for being women. It requires us to value motherhood not as a regrettable detour but as one of the most profound contributions a human being can make to society. It requires us to tell young women the whole truth: you can have a career and a family, but biology is not optional, and time is not infinite. And it requires us to stop letting men—whether they call themselves feminists or not—define what female flourishing looks like.

I have empathy for the well-meaning feminist man. Many of them genuinely want to do right by girls and women. But good intentions aren’t enough when the ideology they champion has spent fifty years telling women that their bodies, their desires, and their deepest callings are problems to be solved rather than gifts to be treasured.

The man who tells you that your highest purpose is to become more like him may be the one who truly hates what we are the most.

The feminist man may wear the right slogans and post the right memes. He may cry the right tears on camera. But if he can’t look at a woman who chooses motherhood and see her as fully equal—if he measures her worth by a spreadsheet of lifetime earnings—he isn’t fighting misogyny. He’s practicing it, often more effectively than the crude chauvinists ever could.

Women deserve better. We deserve men and women who respect us as women, not as defective men. We deserve a culture that celebrates the extraordinary power of female biology and the unique strength it requires rather than demanding we suppress it for the sake of “parity.” And we deserve to call out the wolf in ally’s clothing, no matter how many Instagram posts he makes about female empowerment.

Because in the end, the man who tells you that your highest purpose is to become more like him may be the one who truly hates what we are the most.