Can Hillary Continue to Evade Accountability?
Hillary Clinton, for the most part, eagerly embraced the record of President Barack Obama during Thursday night’s Brooklyn, New York debate on CNN against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sanders has won eight of the last nine state primaries or caucuses, with the all-important New York state primary coming up this Tuesday. The question of Hillary’s mishandling of classified information never came up in the debate. But earlier in the week, the President had doubled down on his attempt to assure the public that at worst, Hillary was just “careless” regarding her handling of classified materials on her private, unsecured email server while secretary of state. And that wasn’t the first time that he has publicly pre-judged this ongoing investigation, while claiming to have no more knowledge of the facts or the investigation than what can be found in the news.
Judge Andrew Napolitano wonders whether Obama’s use of the term “careless” was “Machiavellian” or just “dumb.” He wrote that by calling it “careless,” it “may actually harm her in the eyes of the public or even serve as a dog whistle to the FBI. That’s because carelessness is a species of negligence, and espionage, which is the failure to safeguard state secrets by removing them from their proper place of custody, is the rare federal crime that can be proved by negligence—to be precise, gross negligence.”
It would appear, however, that Obama and Hillary are protecting each other. If Hillary is indicted, Obama surely would be ensnared in the scandal, and would face the wrath of the Clintons for destroying her chance to become president.
As we move toward the two presidential nominating conventions this summer, the FBI’s dual probes into the transmission of classified material on Mrs. Clinton’s private server, and allegations of corruption, may have reached a vital stage. According to Politico earlier in the month, the FBI will be interviewing top State Department staffers over the coming weeks, and maybe even Hillary Clinton herself.
Four of Mrs. Clinton’s staffers who are likely to be interviewed—Jake Sullivan, Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson and Philippe Reines—have sought representation from Beth Wilkinson, who, as we noted, is the wife of NBC’s David Gregory and a Clinton donor.
Sources have told Politico that Sullivan “authored” top secret emails. He is currently a top foreign policy advisor to Clinton’s campaign. However, that Politico article fails to mention that Mrs. Clinton wrote 104 classified emails herself. This omission is but one of many attempts that the news media have made to shield Mrs. Clinton from the consequences of her actions.
“The Department of Justice will not reveal to the aides or their lawyers what it knows about the case or what evidence of criminal wrongdoing, if any, it has acquired on each of them,” wrote Judge Napolitano in another column. “Hence, if they submit to an FBI interview, they will go in ‘blind.’ By going in blind, the aides run the risk of getting caught in a ‘perjury trap.’”
An interview with Mrs. Clinton would be blind, as well. “If she were to decline to be interviewed…the feds would leak her rejection of their invitation, and political turmoil would break loose,” added Napolitano, continuing, “because one of her most imprudent and often repeated public statements in this case has been that she can’t wait to talk to the FBI. That’s a lie, and the FBI knows it.”
Al Jazeera America’s (AJA) David Shuster reported last month that an interview with Clinton could come within days. It has not, and AJA signed off the air for good this week. FBI Director James Comey told WIVB on April 4 that he felt little pressure to conclude the investigation before the Democrats’ convention this summer.
As we have reported, the FBI’s delay in concluding its investigation casts a shadow over Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and makes the investigation appear more and more politicized as it drags on. Add to this that the State Department’s own probe has been put on hold in deference to the FBI’s investigation, and it has become clear that public pressure is mounting on both sides for the bureau to finish its work.
There is no doubt at this point that Mrs. Clinton has been caught publicly in numerous lies, yet the mainstream media continue to overlook her many falsehoods in an attempt to bolster her candidacy. In particular, the news media continue to allow Mrs. Clinton to call these potentially criminal proceedings a “security review.”
“They [Republicans] are clinging to the hope that the way they’ll be able to deal with that is that at some time between now and the election, and they say this, that they will get to see Hillary Clinton in handcuffs,” said NBC’s Matt Lauer on The Today Show on April 8. “That there will be some kind of political perp walk based on your private server.”
“Oh my goodness! Well, Matt, I know that they live in that world of fantasy and hope because they’ve got a mess on their hands on the Republican side,” replied Mrs. Clinton. “That is not going to happen. There is not even the remotest chance that is going to happen.”
Director Comey has a reputation for having been an independent, straight-shooter under multiple administrations. He was deputy special counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. “In 1996, after months of work, Comey came to some damning conclusions: Hillary Clinton was personally involved in mishandling documents and had ordered others to block investigators as they pursued their case,” writes Massimo Calabresi for Time magazine. “Worse, her behavior fit into a pattern of concealment: she and her husband had tried to hide their roles in two other matters under investigation by law enforcement.”
However, when Comey investigated a potential pay-for-play vote-buying scheme involving both Clintons, he found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. “The [Hasidic] village leaders’ aggressive courting of the president and Mrs. Clinton before and after the 2000 Senate election raised questions of whether the men’s sentences were reduced in exchange for votes,” reported The New York Times in 2002.
The mainstream media continue to ignore evidence of corruption in hopes that as Democrat Party heir apparent Mrs. Clinton will attain the presidency. A prompt and full investigation by the FBI, no matter the outcome, is necessary so that Americans can make an educated vote this election.
And there is yet another wrinkle to this story, another clock that is ticking. As The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel reported last week, two federal judges, Royce Lamberth and Emmet Sullivan, are demanding some explanations from the State Department and Mrs. Clinton. They have granted Judicial Watch “the right to conduct discovery into the origins and handling of her private email system.” This is being done in a Freedom of Information case, for which discovery is rarely used.
Newly released emails show that some emails that should have been were not turned over to the State Department. One of the judges said that the fact that Mrs. Clinton and her aides were the ones who decided which emails would be turned over to State was “evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith.” The other judge said that it “boggles the mind that the State Department allowed this circumstance to arise in the first place. It’s just very, very, very troubling.”
The depositions that these judges are allowing as part of discovery in this case are set to happen right about the time of the Democrat convention in July. More bombshells to drop in this strangest of all presidential election years.
Reprinted with author’s permission from Accuracy in Media
Read more at http://www.aim.org/aim-column/can-hillary-continue-to-evade-accountability/#qG10uWHiLO2PU1HJ.99
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