By Ian Linker
If you are curious how a person like the presumptive GOP presidential nominee could ascend to such heights, look no further than Tuesday’s unusual statement by FBI Director James Comey explaining why in his opinion criminal charges against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton are unwarranted.
What America desperately needed yesterday was an honest and objective analysis from the Director. Instead, it got another double standard. It got a political punchline. It got more of the same protection of the elitist political establishment that the American people are so sick and tired of.
The rule of law – a doctrine of uncompromising importance to our republic – suffered yet another damaging blow.
There were two federal statutes at issue; one a felony if violated and the other a misdemeanor. To be guilty of the felony, Secretary Clinton needed to have acted with gross negligence, not intent, in permitting the removal and disclosure of information regarding national defense from its usual place of safekeeping.
But Director Comey apparently based his entire analysis on a lack of “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.” But intent is not the standard under the felony statute. It requires gross negligence. And the Director all but acknowledged Secretary Clinton’s guilt, and certainly enough to prosecute her under the statute, when he acknowledged the existence of “evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
So, according to the Director, extreme carelessness is a defense under the statute. Such a defense makes no sense given the express language of the statute.
Now such a distinction may be all but meaningless to Clinton’s supporters, but to those of us who honor and cherish the rule of law, it is tremendously sad. And a reason – not the reason – there is so much anger in this country is this apparent double standard that exists for the liberal elite.
People have been prosecuted under the felony statute for far less offensive conduct than Secretary Clinton’s lapse. For instance, leaving copies of classified materials in a duffle bag and then failing to return them, forgetting protected documents in a desk drawer, and disposing documents for shredding in a garbage can instead of following the proper destruction protocol have all resulted in criminal prosecution under the statute.
And the facts against Clinton are far more damning:
-Eight email chains contained top secret information.
-110 emails of the more than 30,000 Clinton disclosed were classified when they were sent or received.
-Three emails deleted by Mrs. Clinton, but found forensically by the FBI, contained classified information.
How this isn’t gross negligence is a mystery to me. Even the State Department Inspector General warned that Clinton’s private server was vulnerable to hackers. And thus sending classified information over this unsecured server was criminal.
But nevertheless, Director Comey, who acknowledged extreme carelessness, somehow recommended no prosecution and now Attorney General Loretta Lynch agrees – as she said she would during the fallout following her recent strange meeting with President Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac.
So once again the Clintons show they are above the law while everyone else is held to a different standard. People are understandably outraged. And this anger has brought us, well, Trump. The American people deserve better. Far better.
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