Not Unprecedented
James Comey is about to get the Ken Starr treatment. The old saw has it that when the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; when they are both against you, attack the prosecutor. That’s where we are now in the Clinton e-mail saga. The Clinton machine is gearing up for a ferocious assault on FBI Director Comey designed to change the subject from her e-mails to Justice Department protocols.
In what the New York Times describes as a coordinated attack by Hillary Clinton and her allies, Mrs. Clinton assailed Mr. Comey’s decision to notify Congress of his decision to re-open the e-mail investigation as “unprecedented” and “troubling”. If I were Mrs. Clinton and I continuously lied about my e-mail server I would be troubled too. But Comey’s action is hardly unprecedented.
In July of 2008 Alaska’s senior Senator, Ted Stevens, a Republican, was indicted by the Justice Department on corruption charges. He was subsequently convicted on October 28, 2008, just days before the election. He lost his re-election bid by a narrow margin.
The story doesn’t end there. Attorney General Eric Holder moved to have the verdict set aside in 2009 after an investigation found that the investigation and prosecution of Stevens “…were permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens’s defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness”.
And then there is the Presidential election of 1992. Larry Walsh, the Special Prosecutor in the Iran-Contra affair, abused his power when re-indicted former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on October 30, the Friday before the Presidential election. There was no reason for Walsh to have taken such a step except to influence the Presidential election, which it almost certainly did, in favor of Bill Clinton.
Somehow or other I don’t remember the Clinton’s complaining about that one.
About Those Protocols
Note the irony. Hillary Clinton breached every protocol known to mankind, or at least the State Department, when she set up her private e-mail server and when she mixed Clinton Foundation business with State Department business. Not to mention the impropriety of Bill Clinton meeting privately with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the back of an airplane shortly before the decision not to prosecute Mrs. Clinton.
And now she and her sycophants are complaining about Comey not adhering to protocol. That is rather amusing, n’est pas?
It is all part of the same old story. The Clinton’s are essentially lawless; they play by their own rules, which is to say that for them—there are no rules. Even down to securing building permits, as it turns out. Sunday’s New York Times describes how the Clinton’s just go ahead and build away without bothering to secure the necessary permits. So it is in matters big and small.
The Upshot
It is true that when James Comey wrote to Congress to inform them of the latest developments in the e-mail saga he probably violated policy and guidelines. Comey has been grandstanding like this for years. As the Clinton’s would say, nothing new to see here.
According to Justice guidelines, officials are supposed to refrain from taking actions that might influence election outcomes. But no matter what he did, either by commission or omission Comey’s actions could influence this year’s election. Even if he had chosen to stay silent, the story probably would have leaked anyway. And it is hard to take complaints about protocol violations seriously from people who had no problem with Bill Clinton meeting with Loretta Lynch privately in the back of an airplane while Hillary was the subject of an ongoing investigation. But that is all inside baseball.
What really matters is the heart of the story. Once again, the Clinton operation has been shown to be untruthful. More to the point there is the ongoing damage to fundamental institutions that seems to follow the Clinton’s everywhere they go. After staining State and Justice, Hillary Clinton is now attacking the FBI in an effort to destroy its institutional credibility and that of its Director in order to salvage her Presidential quest. That, apparently, is her idea of stewardship.
If history is any guide, we can expect more bombshells in the days ahead. Strap in.
JFB
