I watched the entirety of the statement FBI Director James Comey made yesterday about whether to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling government documents while she was secretary of state. My reaction as I watched was the same as countless others have shared afterwards.
Comey spent approximately 14 of his 15 minutes laying out a very strong case for a Clinton indictment. As I watched, I actually began to believe that was where he was going to end up. His litany of what the FBI discovered exposed lie after lie that Hillary has told over these many months. He even said that others in her e-mail chain were probably hacked and admitted that even though they couldn’t pin it down completely whether she was hacked directly by foreign powers, those kinds of hackers would know how to hide their activity.
Everything he said led to an indictment. That’s what made the final minute so mind-numbingly shocking.
Comey didn’t have to make a public recommendation for the Department of Justice, but he did. He declared that since Hillary had no “intent” to harm the nation through her gross negligence (he didn’t use that term precisely, but his account of what they found points to it without a doubt), he didn’t think that any “reasonable” prosecutor would bring a case like this to trial.
Why did he make this decision to proclaim this publicly when all his authority really amounted to was to send the evidence over to the Department of Justice? If he had done that, without giving his opinion so blatantly, the decision would have fallen on the shoulders of Loretta Lynch, already disgraced by her secret meeting with Bill Clinton.
Comey gave Lynch an out; this public recommendation offered her a way of escape from making the decision herself since she already had said she would follow any recommendation made by the FBI.
Those who know Comey personally and have always touted his integrity are shocked by what he did. They say it goes against everything they know about the man. Naturally, conspiracy theories abound. No, I don’t believe he did this to avoid a mysterious death at the hands of the Clintons, but with the Clinton history of corruption and hardball, I can see why people may jump to that conclusion.
What Comey did was to lay an extra legal burden on this case: having to prove that Hillary had “intent” to harm the United States through her actions. Those in the know about the law have commented forcefully that he practically made that up. The law doesn’t require that kind of proof; it focuses instead on negligence, and people are responsible and should be penalized on that basis alone.
Comey himself even said this. He noted that while he didn’t advocate criminal charges, that government employees who do this kind of thing face penalties and other administrative actions.
What penalty will Hillary Clinton receive? A presidential nomination? Some penalty.
We now have as the presumptive Democrat nominee someone who, if she weren’t running for president, would be disqualified from being given a security clearance.
The justice system at the highest level of our government has become a joke. When I refer to the Department of Injustice, I’m being descriptive, not sarcastic.
Meanwhile, feel free to use Comey’s concept of justice the next time you face a situation like this:
Unless your last name is Clinton, Kennedy, or Obama, it might not work.