Hillary Clinton, Criminal or Rascal? You Decide.

Hillary Clinton, Criminal or Just Rascal?
The View from the Middle

Have you heard the defenders / excusers of Hillary Clinton’s skullduggery? They point out that all of her misdeeds occurred in the past, and they want to focus on the future. While that may sound clever and even profound, just a small amount of thoughtful consideration reveals this rationale to be laughable.
Of course, they would like to forget all this and move on. So does every lawbreaker being tried for his or her crimes. What they don’t want you to realize is that all transgressions being investigated have occurred in the past. Duh! And, if every criminal were allowed to use this defense, we would have no need for a judicial system at all. Just forget all of these past offenses and focus on the future! Someone should call Paul Manafort quick. I’m pretty sure he’s being investigated for crimes of the past.
So, let’s get past this ridiculous argument and look at Hillary’s questionable behavior and decide whether it is criminal or just inappropriate. Let’s start with the most recently uncovered reality that Hillary and the DNC (arguably the same thing) paid for the now famous dossier. Hillary, of course, denies knowing anything about it, even though her campaign spent some 10 to 12 million dollars for this work of fiction. Even if she did know, she would suggest it was just “opposition research”.
Asking us to believe that she didn’t know about the dossier stretches believability to the point of its breaking point. The Clinton’s are very smart people. Bill is supposedly the fourth smartest President ever with a reported IQ of just under 150, and Hillary’s 140 IQ puts her in the top one quarter of one percent of all humans. They would have to be stupid or devious not to know about this 12 million dollar expenditure. I’ll let you make your own decision on which is most likely for the Clinton’s.
Next, was the dossier a piece of opposition research or an intentional smear job designed to cast doubt on the character of Donald Trump (like that was needed). Even though there is plenty of hanky-panky here, I have to agree with Alan Dershowitz, (an unlikely ally for me) even if intent was proven, I doubt that there is anything criminal in the dossier scandal. Sleazy? Yes! Criminal? No!
Now, let’s talk about her takeover of the DNC. Her supporters describe her as a “white knight” that came to the rescue of a bankrupt DNC. So I guess Bernie Sanders should be sending her a thank you note. I’ve read the agreement that the leadership of the DNC signed to give her control of hiring, strategy and spending when the primaries were just beginning, and it is my opinion that there is no way they could have offered Bernie the same deal. The two deals would have been in complete conflict.
But while this may have been underhanded, I again have to agree with my friend Alan Dershowitz again. This was probably not illegal. The DNC may decide to create some internal controls that would prohibit this in the future, but as of now, it is probably not illegal. Questionable behavior? For sure. Illegal? Probably not.
How about the Uranium One deal? Why would the United States allow the Russians to purchase 20% of our uranium reserves in the first place? And, was it appropriate for the Clinton Foundation to receive over $145 million from Russian entities connected with the deal while Hillary was the Secretary of State and one of the nine parties who had to approve the transaction? Don’t forget that Bill Clinton also received a measly $500,000 fee from a Russian bank invested in Uranium One for a 20-minute speech. I’m sure he’s spellbinding, but $25,000 a minute? Really?
Again, there may not be any actual laws in place that would prohibit a sitting Secretary of State from taking hundreds of million of dollars from foreign countries, but there may be some laws put in place for the future given the conflict of interest that this escapade suggested. Even President Obama asked Hillary not to do this because he knew the kind of optics it would create. Was this totally inappropriate? You bet! Criminal? Maybe not, - Yet!
Actually, the scandal that is most likely to end up in criminality is the oldest, and that is Hillary’s use of a private server. Actually, the use of a private server may not be illegal, although no other Secretary of State or President or Cabinet Secretary ever had their own private server, no matter how often her supporters try to tell you they did. Again, Congress may create a law to prohibit this in the future, and probably should, but Hillary may not have broken the law in setting up this private server.
There are two aspects of this particular scandal, however, that could get Hillary in legal trouble. First, as James Comey wrote in one of his early versions of Hillary’s exoneration, she was “grossly negligent” in her handling of classified and top secret information. He changed that language to “extremely careless” when he realized that that the terminology of gross negligence was actually used in the statute that Hillary was accused of violating. However, as legal pundit Judge Napolitano suggests, there is no real difference between “extremely careless” and “grossly negligent”. This could end up being a problem for Hillary.
Finally, Hillary deleted 30,000 emails that were under subpoena from the Justice Department. And she didn’t just delete them as you and I would. She used BleachBit to obliterate them to the point of being irretrievable. If she just wanted them out of her way, why wouldn’t she just delete them, as you and I would? Whether she likes it or not, the way she eliminated these messages reveals an attempt to conceal. This could also be a real problem for Mrs. Clinton.
It is not my desire for anyone to go to jail. What I want is for our politicians to have character so that they are repulsed by the temptation for subterfuge. But if we don’t hold people of power accountable, we will continue to have a double standard of justice. People like you and me will be punished to the full extent of the law while the rich and well connected get off scot-free. Is that the America any of us want?