The rift between America’s Left and Right moved this week.
Hillary Clinton has done it again. She has evaded the grasp of the long arm of the law.
What’s that? She didn’t break the law with her email servers? FBI Director James Comey said so?
Yes he did, yes he did.
But is he right?
FILE -In this file photo combo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, left, and FBI Director James. Comey. (AP Photo/File)
According to a lot of lawyers, judges, and legal experts weighing in on the Director’s statement on Tuesday, no. The common sentiment coming out of the Monday quarterbacking is that James Comey made it very clear Hillary Clinton did everything required to be prosecuted for a felony violation of Section 793f of the federal penal code (Title 18), which says anyone with lawful access to highly classified information who acts with gross negligence in removing and causing to be removed from its proper place of custody, transmitting it or causing it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it is guilty of a crime.
Comey himself conceded Mrs. Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless” with classified material and there is a very real possibility that her reckless behavior likely led to foreign intelligence agents, including those hostile to the United States, gaining access to those classified communications.
But Director Comey recommended no prosecution for the violations of law he very clearly articulated during his statement.
According to Andrew McCarthy, former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York known for his prosecutions of the Blind Sheik and the terrorists who bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Comey and the FBI effectively rewrote the statute.
McCarthy wrote in the National Review on July 5th, “In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.” FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook
The second guessing and re-analyzing of this decision will continue for…well…a long damn time. Probably and likely right up to the election in November.
From the legal perspective Comey’s decision has been shredded. In concluding his statement before a congressional committee today, Comey said, “I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.”
I want to believe that. I really do. Throughout this investigation I wanted to believe the FBI and its Director would do exactly what he claims to have done. But I don’t. Here’s why.
The Whitewater investigation or Whitewater scandal as it was later known, involved real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s.
The investigation was done to determine whether Bill Clinton used his political position and influence as governor of Arkansas (in the 1980s) to secure an illegal loan to benefit Bill and Hillary’s business partner Jim McDougal. Several people involved in Whitewater went to jail, but no criminal prosecution followed Bill and Hillary Clinton.
James Comey was the Deputy Special Counsel on the Whitewater investigation….
American Evita: Hillary Clinton’s Rise to Power, a book authored by Christopher Anderson a former contributing editor for Time Magazine, goes into great detail about Comey’s past dealings with the Clintons
Lloyd Billingsly writes in Frontpage Mag, “After Bill Clinton left the White House, one staffer told Andersen, the entire focus was on “getting Hillary back in.” The road led through New York, where Hillary took aim at the Senate seat vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Hillary was not from New York and had never spent more than a few days there, so she needed creative ways to attract votes.
New Square, a Hasidic enclave 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, had voted as a bloc in previous elections and campaign workers urged Hillary urged to stop there. In New Square, four members of the Skver sect had been convicted in 1999 of bilking government aid programs for some $30 million. During her visit, Hillary denied that any pardon was discussed.
During the final days of his presidency, Bill Clinton opted to reduce the prison terms of the New Square offenders, and after 9/11 that sparked an investigation. As Anderson notes, “Hillary received an unexpected gift in late June when, without explanation, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey closed the New Square clemency case.”
Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich also drew an investigation and Andersen finds it odd that the Bush administration would “help the Clinton’s out” by refusing to release documents related to the pardons. And “in accordance with his boss’s wishes, U.S Attorney James Comey gave Bill and Hillary a pass.”
Now we see the paths of James Comey and the Clintons crossing again, and again Mr. Comey is in a position to let the long arm of the law grab Mrs. Clinton and hold her accountable, and again Mrs. Clinton slips free.
Just a guy doing his job according to the law? Or something else?
About half of the people in this country think it’s one, while the other half thinks it’s the other.
And the divide widens.
