(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
And so once again the leading crime family in America skates, thumbing its nose at the rule of law as an earnest but politically clueless FBI director stands before the nation to repeat the well-worn Clinton mantra of "insufficient evidence," and to attribute to Hillary another shopworn cliche that the Clintons habitually use in their defense: sloppiness.
In other words, it was a judgment call by James Comey. After laying out clear proof that Mrs. Clinton violated both the letter and the spirit of the law, he essentially punted by saying this is not the kind of case a reasonable prosecutor would make. Of course it isn't -- not if that prosecutor wants to both keep his job and stay above ground. As a moral failure, Comey even surpassed the supine John Roberts, who twice turned down an opportunity to put a stake through Obamacare's black thereby inflicting it upon the American people with the patina of "settled law."
"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey announced at FBI headquarters in Washington. “Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to bring charges. No charges are appropriate in this case. In looking back at our investigations into the mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.”
But Comey had a bigger task: to prevent the nomination of a woman manifestly unsuited to the highest office in the land; a woman of no accomplishment except her sham marriage to a former president (himself impeached, disgraced and disbarred); a woman of Saul Alinsky levels of malevolence toward the nation as founded; and a woman whose candidacy would shame a banana republic in its sheer effrontery.
What Comey essentially said was that he could find no clear intent on the part of Mrs. Clinton -- no intent to hide evidence, no intent to expose national secrets to enemy eyes. The 110 emails that contained classified information and blithely sent roaring along the intertubes by a "careless" Hillary Clinton are of no moment. For who could ever doubt that she, her husband, and fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama have nothing but the best interests of the nation at heart?
Never mind that the woman was secretary of State, for God's sake, not some pencil-pushing bureaucrat toiling away in the bowels of Foggy Bottom. Secretary of State is the most distinguished cabinet position in the government, a honor generally bestowed by responsible presidents on their most trusted and able advisors. But, as it turns out, for Mrs. Clinton it was simply a resume-enhancer and if she had to let four Americans die at Benghazi at her boss's behest in order to get her ticket punched, well, politics ain't beanbag.
Hence the setup campaign we all just witnessed. The "accidental" meeting on a Phoenix tarmac last week between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton -- an outrageous moral violation of the legal system. Lynch's bold words that she would "accept" the FBI's recommendations. The FBI's sudden "invitation" on Saturday to Mrs. Clinton to "voluntarily" submit to examination. Hillary and Obama, all smiles, out campaigning together this very day. The events of the past week would give any rational person sufficient grounds to believe that the fix was in, and has been all along.
It is a common tactic of defense lawyers in criminal trials to set up a straw-man for the jury: a crime the defendant has not committed. The idea is that by knocking down a crime the prosecution does not allege and cannot prove, the defense may confuse the jury into believing the defendant is not guilty of the crime charged. Judges generally do not allow such sleight-of-hand because innocence on an uncharged crime is irrelevant to the consideration of the crimes that actually have been charged.It seems to me that this is what the FBI has done today. It has told the public that because Mrs. Clinton did not have intent to harm the United States we should not prosecute her on a felony that does not require proof of intent to harm the United States. Meanwhile, although there may have been profound harm to national security caused by her grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, we’ve decided she shouldn’t be prosecuted for grossly negligent mishandling of classified information. I think highly of Jim Comey personally and professionally, but this makes no sense to me.
James Comey was the last man standing between Hillary Clinton and the complete corruption of the American government, and he failed his country. Eliot Ness, he wasn't:
Those who know the FBI know that it's still basically a band of Catholic schoolboys, dutifully filling in their investigator's notebooks in order to produce beautifully typed book reports to be turned in to Sister Mary Margaret or get their palms whacked with a ruler. They may get the facts, but the bigger picture fairly consistently eludes them; but then again, the bigger picture is not their job.
Comey bleated that "this investigation was done honestly, competently and independently, no outside influence of any kind was brought to bear" -- but so what? Is this how the republic falls, one dotted-i and crossed-t at a time?
But in times such as ours, more was needed than dutiful punctiliousness. Starting around the turn of the last century, the criminal urban gangs realized they could control -- and steal -- enormous sums of money and wield political power by taking over City Hall. Indeed, Tammany Hall was dedicated to doing precisely that -- tit for tat, pay to play -- and the young Bill Clinton got a priceless education in municipal corruption in Hot Springs (known at the time as "Tammany South") It's little wonder he brought that corrupting ethos with him to Little Rock and Washington.
Once a city was conquered, they could move on to the state level. During the 1930s, before Franklin Roosevelt turned Thomas Dewey loose on the gangs, gangland effectively owned New Jersey, Illinois, Arkansas and Nevada. From there, it was but a short hop toward national politics, leveraging the Electoral College via their control of the major population centers in vote-rich states. As a result, the Democrats now have a chokehold on the White House, as the election and re-election of a complete nonentity named Barack Hussein Obama has proven.
In failing to find sufficient evidence of a crime big enough to derail Hillary's candidacy, Comey missed the chance to take down the far larger racket that's strangling America. Dewey succeeded because he was ruthless, euchring Lepke into an electric chair bounce by convincing him to surrender to J. Edgar Hoover personally on federal narcotics charges. But Hoover double-crossed the murderer and turned him over to New York State, which fried him in Old Sparky on a murder beef.
I'll leave it to others to sort out the electoral ramifications of today's news, but in the end it's not going to make a whit of difference. Hillary now cruises to her nomination, taps into the Obama network, and flounces around the country shouting to her true believers that this was just another trumped-up indignity at the hands of the Rethuglican attack machine. She will say -- a lie, but she will say it -- that she's now been cleared by the FBI. Who cares that Comey essentially said this woman should never be allowed near a security clearance again; after all, if and when she's president, she won't need one.
It doesn't matter how hard the FBI worked, or how diligent their work was. It doesn't matter that they sleuthed or sussed out hidden, fragmentary, lost or concealed Clinton emails. It doesn't matter how they arrived at their conclusion to do nothing. All that matters is that they did nothing.
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