FBI director James Comey has twice declined to recommend indictment of Hillary Clinton for her numerous crimes involving her illicit use of a private, unsecured e-mail server. Now, many — including Clinton and Comey — seem to think the issue is settled. Moreover, Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election seems to be taken as a sign by many that it’s time to move on and put the Clinton scandals behind us. But neither Comey’s cowardly blindness nor the election results set aside the fact that Clinton broke the law and endangered national security.
Candidate Donald Trump promised that President Donald Trump would have Clinton investigated by a special prosecutor. In the second debate, he said:
And I’ll tell you what. I didn’t think I’d say this, but I’m going to say it, and I hate to say it. But if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it, and we’re going to have a special prosecutor.
When I speak, I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people that have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this, where e-mails — and you get a subpoena, you get a subpoena, and after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 e-mails, and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say, very expensive process.
So we’re going to get a special prosecutor, and we’re going to look into it, because you know what? People have been — their lives have been destroyed for doing one-fifth of what you’ve done. And it’s a disgrace. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
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When Clinton began to answer his claim, saying, “you know, it is — it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country—,” Candidate Trump cut her off with, “Because you’d be in jail.”
However, when Trump gave his victory speech after it had become clear he had won the election, and after Clinton had called him and congratulated him, he said:
Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country. I mean that very sincerely.
But surely this “major debt of gratitude” would not include gratitude for any crimes Clinton committed while in the service of our country. Which brings up the question: Was Trump simply trying to strike the appropriate conciliatory tone in his victory speech, without putting a lot of thought into his actual words? Or put another way: Does he truly intend to have Hillary invesigated, as he promised he would do in the second presidential debate?
Clinton’s crimes include all of the things Trump mentioned, including deleting e-mails and wiping the server (what prosecutors call “destroying evidence”) after receiving a subpoena for that server and those e-mails. They also include, according to leaked documents published by WikiLeaks and others,
• Sending classified information over that server to people who did not have sufficient security clearances to see that information, including Huma Abedin and Chelsea Clinton;
• Ordering her maid (who also lacked security clearance) to print classified documents;
• A series of “pay to play” schemes whereby the ticket price to meet with government officials — including the president — was a large donation to the Clinton Foundation;
• Lying under oath during her Benghazi tesimony; and
• A multiplicity of other crimes too long to list in any one artilce.
The mountain of evidence against Clinton includes the fact that thousands of classified e-mails from Clinton were found on the laptop belonging to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner, who is married to Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide, is under investigation for child pornography and sending sexual images to a minor.
Clinton also forwarded at least one classified e-mail to her daughter, Chelsea. That e-mail was one of the thousands Clinton deleted before turning a USB drive of e-mails over to investigators. Chelsea was using the pseudonym Diane Reynolds for the e-mail address that Clinton forwarded the e-mail to. When releasing the e-mail, the State Department redacted the entire text because it contained classified foreign government information. Chelsea has no government clearance to access classified information.
Furthermore, recently released e-mails show that Clinton — on a regular basis — ordered her maid, Marina Santos, to print e-mails that contained classified information. In one e-mail message from 2011, Clinton wrote to Abedin about a sensitive government e-mail. Clinton wrote, “Pls ask Marina to print for me in am.” This was far from the only time this happened. In 2012, Clinton aide Monica Hanley e-mailed Clinton about a classified e-mail regarding the new president of Malawi, saying, “We can ask Marina to print this.” A plethora of such instances is shown in other e-mails. This was a regular occurrence and an extreme breach of security. It is also a federal crime that is well documented by the recently released e-mails.
That the Clinton Foundation worked hand-in-hand with Clinton’s State Department to sell access to government officials is a well-documented fact. National Review reported, regarding just part of the titanic body of evidence shedding light on the degree to which Secretary Clinton was guilty of “pay to play”:
A lot of what we’ve learned from the Podesta e-mails confirmed everyone’s worst suspicions about the clubbiness and cattiness of political and media elites. But it’s merely embarrassing, rather than illegal, for Neera Tanden to write that Hillary Clinton’s “instincts can be terrible” or for Politico’s Glenn Thrush to admit to Podesta that “I have become a hack.”
Clinton soliciting large sums from a foreign government to her personal foundation right before she runs for president is something else entirely: It looks a lot like a future commander-in-chief asking for a bribe, which is why so many Clinton campaign staffers objected to it loudly, early, and often.
An e-mail from Huma Abedin makes clear that this was initiated by Hillary Clinton herself:
CGI also wasn’t pushing for a meeting in Morocco and it wasn’t their first choice. This was HRC’s idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request.
The exchange also suggests that Clinton’s staff recognized how bad this would look, but the candidate herself wanted to go forward with it. At times her most loyal employees seem exasperated with her refusal to heed their warnings. “She created this mess and she knows it,” Abedin concludes the e-mail.
Add to these crimes that Clinton swore, under oath, before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on October 22, 2015 that she never received any requests (including requests for diplomatic security) from U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died during the Benghazi attacks on September 11. Again, those pesky e-mails tell a very different story. In truth, Stevens e-mailed Clinton repeatedly.
Nor is this the only time she perjured herself during that testimony. She also denied — again, under oath — that her longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal had advised her on anything to do with Libya, saying, “He was not at all my adviser on Libya.” But, again, the e-mails show she was lying. In one e-mail, dated November 12, 2012, Blumenthal advised Secretary Clinton that “in response to press question[s] that you make yourself available” she should use the opportunity to “publicly and directly puncture conspiracy fever on Benghazi before any closed hearing.” His advice was not confined to damage control after the fact. A year and a half before the attack, Blumenthal e-mailed Hillary to advise her on the adoption of a no-fly zone over Libya.
While it is well known that lying under oath is a Clinton family tradition, it is still a crime. So is selling foreign policy by granting access to foreign and domestic powers based on “donations” to a foundation. So is granting access to classified documents to people who lack appropriate (or for that matter, any) clearance.
Considering the staggering volume of her crimes, it is little wonder that something of a rebellion began within the ranks of the FBI when political appointee Director Comey refused to recommend indictment and ordered evidence destroyed.
With Comey having twice transgressed against both logic and the law, it will be up to President Trump to bring the light of truth and the weight of justice to bear on these and other crimes committed by Clinton and her cohorts. His promise demands it. His oath of office will demand it. The integrity of the rule of law demands it. We, the people, must also demand it.
Photo of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: AP Images
