Maybe Hillary Clinton shouldn’t have to worry about prison, but she surer than anything should not be an unchecked president of the United States.
As secretary of state, she was downright reckless in ways that could endanger American lives. She disobeyed the law. It’s probable some of our worst enemies have read every email word she wrote and received. Maybe they have already used some of that information against us — or will.
That’s what we got from a world-watched press conference in which FBI Director James Comey said he was not recommending criminal prosecution over Clinton’s email adventures. He said interviews, a diligent investigation of thousands of documents and still other research showed no criminal intent on Clinton’s part. But it’s not as if the FBI found nothing amiss.
He said, for instance, that Clinton and her colleagues “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Despite her lies to the contrary, Clinton had to know some of it was indeed top-secret stuff and, said Comey, she had to know something else — that the sloppy system she was using was “no place” for the communications in which she was engaged.
Whatever your politics may be, do you think it possible any halfway responsible person would not have sat back one day and asked herself what in the world she was doing? After all, being secretary of state is one of the more important positions in the world and the information she was dealing could have adverse impacts on all kinds of matters if it fell in the wrong hands. Wouldn’t it at least have occurred to her that the system could easily enough be hacked?
Comey in fact said that it seemed possible that “hostile actors” did hack her computers. As I heard an expert explain before the press conference, nations such as Russia, China and Iran probably had access to every word that went between her, the president and other officials.
Just consider for a moment what that maybe means. Might Iran, for instance, have been that much better prepared to outwit us in negotiations over a nuclear deal?
Reasonable to not prosecute
Clinton has all kinds of problems, such as messing up on a whole long list of tasks while accomplishing something once maybe, at least if we keep looking.
A real biggie is that she is not trustworthy. Reflect on the unbelievable conflicts of interest with the Clinton foundation, the speeches given for hundreds of thousands of dollars and the hidden conversations with special interest groups and on and on. Defenders say, well, no quid pro quo has been absolutely proven. Right. And Jesse James was never convicted of robbing a bank.
Even though some other legal matters are still brewing out there, it no longer seems possible that an indictment will get between her and the White House.
Even so, and even though it has already been attacked by many, Comey’s advice against prosecution does not strike me as unreasonable. By countless observations, he is an honest man and there is in fact an important legal principle that provable criminal intent should be a major factor in deciding whether or not to try someone in certain kinds of cases.
Comey also said, however, that many who acted as Clinton had could be subject to security sanctions. Think about that for a minute — we could end up with a president who otherwise might not be able to obtain a national security clearance.
It’s true that the alternative to Clinton this year is in many ways more frightening than she is. What seems to me hugely important is for Republicans to get enough votes in House and Senate races to help forestall disaster through checks and balances.
