DRUDGE DREAD OF CLINTONS

Would flee US near elex

WASHINGTON — Online news pioneer Matt Drudge, the publisher of the powerful Drudge Report news-aggregation website, feared the Clinton family would plant cocaine on him as payback and would even leave the country around election time as a precaution, according to a former employee.

Joseph Curl, who worked as an editor of the Drudge Report from 2010 to 2014, revealed his former boss’s paranoia in a podcast interview with journalist Chris Moody, host of the “Finding Matt Drudge” series.

“He always leaves the country during election day or the election season — the weeks before the election — because he was afraid,” Curl recalled.

“He said he was worried about the Clintons planting, you know, a bag of cocaine in his car, which he had parked in the parking lot there. So he would always take off and get out of the country around the election.”

Drudge (inset), 57, rocketed from obscurity into a media powerhouse by first reporting in 1998 that then-President Bill Clinton was having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, a story that Newsweek was holding and that ultimately resulted in Clinton’s impeachment. Drudge later circulated largely unflattering stories about Hillary Clinton during her 2008 and 2016 campaigns for president — including helping launch into political discourse topics such as concerns about the former first lady’s health.

Curl, a former Washington Times reporter, said, “I really think he was mostly serious” about fearing the Clintons.

“He was the one that exploded Bill Clinton, and he had just spent a few years exploding and targeting Hillary Clinton . . . in the run-up to the 2008 election,” Curl said. “So he was certainly persona non grata among the Clintonistas.” The series hosted by Moody examines Drudge’s decades-long impact on US news coverage and his disappearance from the public spotlight. As of January, Drudge Report had roughly as much US web traffic as The Atlantic magazine and The Daily Beast combined, according to SimilarWeb data.

“He never talked about where he was,” Curl said. “Again, maybe owing back to that story about Hillary Clinton, maybe he had a real fear about the Clintons and somebody doing something to him.”

Drudge and spokespeople for Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.