Saturday, January 9, 2016

The Smoking FBI

     You thought you have it rough? It’s getting so a corrupt politician can’t hide anything any more:

     The latest batch of emails released from Hillary Clinton's personal account from her tenure as secretary of state includes 66 messages deemed classified at some level, the State Department said early Friday.

     In one email, Clinton even seemed to coach a top adviser on how to send secure information outside secure channels....

     Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has repeatedly maintained that she did not send or receive classified material on her personal account. The State Department claims none of the emails now marked classified were labeled as such at the time they were sent.

     However, one email thread from June 2011 appears to include Clinton telling her top adviser Jake Sullivan to send secure information through insecure means.

     In response to Clinton's request for a set of since-redacted talking points, Sullivan writes, "They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They're working on it." Clinton responds "If they can't, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure."

     Gentle Reader, it cannot be put more clearly than this: Hillary Clinton instructed a subordinate to violate the National Security Act. In the email cited above, she convicted herself of that offense. In attempting to deny access to her stored emails to the government, she compounded the offense with the deliberate destruction of evidence. In lying to Congress about it, she committed perjury. If she were anyone else, she’d be looking at trading her pantsuits for an orange jumpsuit.

     But she’s not anyone else. She’s the Democrats’ Anointed One, preselected to take the torch from Obama and continue the program of destroying Americans’ freedom. So the question before us is clear: Will Clinton suffer any penalty at all for her egregious lawbreaking?

     Her risks are considerable:

     The Federal Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s personal server. The recommendations will come very soon.

     The charges will consist of some of the following:

  1. Improper disclosure or retention of classified information.
  2. Destruction of government records.
  3. Lying to federal agents.
  4. Lying under oath.
  5. Obstruction of justice.

     All the counts are familiar to those of us who have followed the Clintons for a quarter of a century, but, as one source familiar with the FBI’s investigation told me, the evidence has now reached a “critical mass.”

     But she is the Anointed One, whose nomination as the Democrats’ 2016 presidential candidate was decreed when she resigned as Secretary of State. Will the powers that be permit her to be indicted?

     It’s not the FBI that indicts a person on federal charges; it’s the Department of Justice, currently headed by Loretta Lynch. Lynch, successor to the odious Eric Holder, was put in place to defend the Obama Administration and the Democrat Party generally. Were she to fail in that mission, her patrons would not look kindly upon her. In light of what’s happened to others who’ve declined to carry the Clintons’ water or hide their dirty laundry, I wouldn’t sell her any life insurance.

     R. Emmett Tyrrell lays out a possible consequence of a decision not to indict:

     [S]uch is the gravity of the charges and the consequences of neglecting them that they cannot be ignored. If they are ignored, people familiar with the investigation say, it will be impossible to prosecute future defendants being charged with the mishandling of classified information. Said Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney, “The intelligence community will not stand for that. They will fight for indictment and they are already in the process of gearing themselves to basically revolt if [the Attorney General] refuses to bring charges.” FBI Director James Comey has reportedly said he will resign if the Bureau’s recommendations for charges are ignored.

     A revolt by the FBI and the larger intelligence community against the Obama Administration would be unprecedented. Yet it is not unimaginable. While its agents and administrators aren’t all angels, the FBI continues to be a service that takes its watchwords – “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” – seriously. As for the intelligence agencies, they’re aware that to excuse so exalted a violator of the information security laws would nullify them for all practical purposes. America would cease to have any secrets.

     There’s a great deal wrong with the information security laws – I’ve long argued that their procedural dictates actually make a spy’s job somewhat easier than it would otherwise be – but they are laws of the United States, duly passed by Congress and signed by presidents. Barack Hussein Obama might consider himself above all federal law – he plainly considers himself above the Constitution – but as dim as he is, he must have some sense of how allowing Hillary Clinton to get away with her lawbreaking would impact him. No, he’d never face any charges personally, but his “legacy” would be permanently stained, perhaps worse than the scandals of the Clinton Administration tainted its record.

     It’s too soon to predict the electoral impact of a Clinton prosecution. Recall that when Spiro Agnew realized that he could not withstand a public trial for his corruption as governor of Maryland, he resigned quietly from the vice-presidency and cut a deal with the prosecuting authorities. The country didn’t hear a single syllable about his lawbreaking until that deal was signed, sealed, and delivered. Something similar might happen in the Clinton scandal...and it just might give rise to the strangest candidacy in American history, as there’s no provision in the Constitution that bars a convicted felon from seeking the presidency.

     But would it be worse for Clinton to evade prosecution? Before you answer, think about the immense appearance fees she, her husband, and their daughter have raked in these past few years – admittedly, often as under-the-table payments for favorable decisions from the State Department.

     Indictment or no indictment, this affair, coupled to the Benghazi atrocities and the re-emergence of Bill Clinton’s many sex scandals, has energized many who are normally (and sensibly) indifferent to politics. Perhaps the most delicious aspect is that Barack Hussein Obama must face not being the focus of national or international attention a whole year earlier than he’d hoped. Truly, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

3 comments:

Tim Turner said...

Absolutely not, Fran.

The people that are up in Hillary's and Obama's strata (CFR, etc.) will never let a blip like this get out of hand.

The media will try to to spin it as, "nothing important was compromised."

If that doesn't work, the story will become that Hillary Clinton was singled out for doing what everyone in government does. That is, they ALL do something that might seem nefarious if we focused on them as the FBI has done to Hillary.

And if THAT doesn't work, Obama will do what he does: make strawman arguments, invoke unconstitutional executive orders, lie in speech after speech or kick her under the bus while pardoning her and saying that her *one* shortcoming shouldn't blind us to her years of service and it's only partisan jerks that would condemn her for whatever she did. . . whatever that is . . . and it's not a if others hadn't done everything they could in service to THEIR ideals, so who are we to judge?

This will go nowhere.

Malatrope said...

Her lawyers are already spinning up their engines on the e-mail that implies she instructed Sullivan to remove classification headers – and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they might win this.

The argument is that the e-mail doesn't prove what was sent was classified. The headers removed may not have been classification headers, they may have been something as simple as a distribution list of people who weren't supposed to know each other, and the contents might have been a pizza recipe or the like.

As far as why they would have wanted to send something on the secure FAX, well, maybe it was an extra special pizza recipe.

Without the document that was sent as evidence, I'm not sure they couldn't win this in court with that argument.

Reg T said...

That she can even be allowed to run as a candidate is proof enough that she is untouchable. It is a known fact that she used to office of the Secretary of State to enrich herself, seeing that State decided in favor of those who "donated" money for those favorable decisions.

She and Willie have gotten away with so much, including - probably - murder for hire. The "Clinton Death List" can't be ignored. Too many connected with suspected(and real) illegal activities by the Clintons have died, several having obviously been murdered. It is unreasonable to think that long list could simply be coincidence.

A country - and a government - which would allow Obama to run for that office and be elected - twice - and ignore his treasonous behavior (assisting a country which continues to swear it will destroy us with its development of nuclear weapons) is a country that will simply ignore her many immoral and illegal behaviors, just as she has ignored questions concerning them. Brace yourself for the very strong possibility of another Clinton administration, this one much worse than the first.