Hillary Isn’t Out of the Woods Yet

Conservatives in Washington and elsewhere were disappointed on July 5 when Director of the FBI James Comey announced that his organization would not recommend an indictment of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her illegal email server and sending of classified information.

To use a kitchen stove analogy, the scandal, which has been growing increasingly heated over the course of two years, has been taken off the “boil” setting of one of the cooking burners, but the heat hasn’t been turned all the way down. Instead, it’s been put in the “simmer” position while Republicans figure out what strategy to use next.

Comey’s announcement, which was months in the making and came immediately following Clinton’s unrecorded and unsworn deposition, upset numerous members of Congress who had expected the FBI Director to come down harder on the former secretary of state.

For conservatives disappointed in his findings, however, there may be a few silver linings in how the case has progressed so far.

First, Comey did not pull any punches with his remarks, declaring, “There is evidence that [Secretary Clinton and her colleagues] were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information… [The FBI] also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified email systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government… Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation… As I said, that’s the definition of negligent.”

For the head of a government branch that has been traditionally apolitical, these remarks were particularly harsh and damning.

As opposed to protestations of innocence from Hillary Clinton and members of her staff, these remarks, coming from the head of the FBI, are difficult to dispute.

In fact, they will certainly be able to serve, perhaps even verbatim, as GOP attack ad sound bites, raising even more doubts amongst the public about Clinton as someone voters can trust in the Fall.

Reaction from Republicans legislators to Comey’s announcement was swift, with Texas senator and former presidential candidate Ted Cruz calling Comey’s lack of an indictment recommendation a “dubious decision.”

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Comey’s conclusion “defies explanation” while Senator Rand Paul called it an “outrage” and declared that “the FBI should be better than this.”

The Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, said Comey’s findings were “surprising and confusing” and that “Congress and the American people have a right to understand the depth and breadth of the FBI’s investigation.”

Even the liberal New York Times harshly criticized Clinton, with columnist Maureen Dowd writing, “The email transgression is not a one off. It’s part of a long pattern of ethical slipping and sliding, obsessive secrecy and paranoia, and collateral damage.”

Some observers are now saying the lack of legal action may actually have a worse effect on Clinton than if there had been an indictment. That is, the taint of a withheld prosecution seems to confirm Donald Trump’s charge of a ‘rigged system’ than a legal consequence that Clinton was somehow able to fight off.

In this case, it’s quite probable that Clinton’s trustworthiness rating from voters — which was already at record low levels for a leading presidential candidate — is likely to drop even lower.

In the meantime, conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch has demanded that Clinton testify in connection with two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits the group has filed related to her emails and to the employment status of her assistant, Huma Abedin.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan will hold a hearing in mid-July, roughly a week before the opening of the Democratic National Convention and coinciding with the opening day of the Republican National Convention, regarding whether Clinton’s testimony will be needed for the cases.

Judge Sullivan has already approved depositions of Abedin, former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, IT specialist Bryan Pagliano and Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy.

Judicial Watch has said Clinton’s testimony is needed because it’s still not clear why she used a private email system instead of the State Department’s and if it was with the intent of stymying FOIA requests for her emails (almost everyone connected with investigating the case believes it was).

Judicial Watch has already obtained at least one message Clinton sent to Abedin, in which she wrote, “Let’s get separate address on device, but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”

According to Judicial Watch attorney Michael Bekesha, “This evidence suggests that, despite the recurrent problems, frustration, and security issues associated with Secretary Clinton’s use of the clintonemail.com system (and after her staff was reminded about FOIA obligations), the secretary nonetheless decided to continue using the system to conduct official government business instead of switching to an official, State Department email system.”

Additional probing in the case may also be warranted. Peter Schweizer, author of the New York Times bestseller-turned-theatrical film, “Clinton Cash,” noted recently that “[Some of] the most basic and troubling questions remain unanswered: why are there gaps in Clinton’s email history? Did she or her team delete emails that she should have made public?”

In a detailed analysis, Schweizer compared the number of emails Clinton received at particularly tense points during her tenure as Secretary of State.

For instance, he examined the number of messages she sent in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, those she transmitted prior to the signing of the 2009 climate accords in Copenhagen, those sent during the military coup in Honduras the same year and the ones she sent amidst the removal of Muammar Gadhafi from power in Libya in 2011.

In most cases, the number of messages spiked as Clinton communicated with subordinates, traveled to different regions and met with national leaders and foreign government officials. Suspiciously, however, for certain trips, the number of messages Clinton claims she sent — those turned over to the State Department — are curiously lacking.

For instance, when Russia was attempting to dominate the world’s uranium market in concert with Rosatom, its state nuclear agency, Clinton supposedly only mentioned the matter once in an email, despite acting as a key player in a number of diplomatic initiatives with Rosatom officials.

Readers of Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash” may recall that Rosatom had purchased a Canadian uranium company owned by investors who later became major donors to the Clinton Foundation, giving the Clintons’ nonprofit organization at least $145 million.

The deal had to be signed off on by Clinton’s State Department, which it was in 2010, despite concerns expressed by Congressional leaders to President Obama.

A Clinton visit to Columbia when Bill Clinton and major Clinton Foundation donor Frank Giustra coincidentally also happened to be in the South American country merited zero emails, despite the fact that both Bill and Hillary each met with the country’s president Alvaro Uribe on the same day separately.

In the weeks following, Giustra’s company received large timber and oil concessions from the Latin American country. On many other trips and instances, Bill Clinton figures prominently in Hillary’s messages.

It’s these email silences that lead Schweizer to conclude that it’s highly likely that among the 31,830 “personal” emails that Clinton’s assistants Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills deleted are a number of work- and/or business-related messages that Clinton never wanted revealed.

As Schweizer relates, veteran political journalist Bob Woodward has said that Hillary’s email scandal “reminds me of the Nixon tapes.” In both that infamous case and this one, what’s notable is evidence that appears to be missing, rather than what’s been presented to the media thus far.


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