by
Walter Brasch
Three weeks before the Democratic National
Convention in Philadelphia, Hillary Rodham Clinton unloaded heavy baggage.
In an extremely rare news conference, FBI
director James Comey summarized the conclusions of a seven month FBI
investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email rather than more secure
governmental servers during her four years as secretary of state.
Clinton’s role in the attack upon the U.S.
consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four dead in September 2012, had been a
major campaign issue. Conservatives and 16 major Republican candidates for the
Republican nomination for president had used what they said was her slow defense
of the consulate to attack her. However, several investigations by
Congressional committees, chaired by Republicans, found no culpability on
Clinton’s part. The cost is about $7 million.
Unable to gain significant traction, the
conservatives looked for another possible scandal, and found it with her use of
personal email to conduct government business. For more than a year, they have
hammered on this scandal. Their hope had been to pull votes from Clinton to
Bernie Sanders, believing that Sanders, if nominated, was the weaker opposition
to the final few Republican candidates. What has resulted is a debt incurred by
taxpayers that is at least $20 million for the investigation, according to the Fiscal Times.
Clinton hurt her campaign by delayed
response to the allegations she compromised national security and then by
dodging and weaving on her public comments, allowing the scandal to fester and
explode. The conservatives got additional ammunition when a meeting between
Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch fell into their laps. Both claim the
meeting in Phoenix was accidental, and the main topic was grandchildren. The
conservatives pounced on that; even liberals, moderates, and independents thought
it was inappropriate for the attorney general who might become the prosecutor
to be chatting with the husband of the presumptive nominee for president who
was the target of a federal investigation.
Both Lynch and the 42nd president, who met on the attorney general’s
government aircraft, later acknowledged they should not have met, even if the
only conversation was social.
In front of news cameras and the press,
Comey revealed that from more than 30,000 emails the FBI read, sorted, and
analyzed, “110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning
agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or
received.” Eight chains, said Comey, contained top secret information; 36
contained secret information; and eight contain confidential information. About
2,000 e-mails were later “up-classified.” The FBI also interrogated numerous
individuals who had knowledge of, and access to, the e-mails. There was no
hacking of Clinton’s server, no leaks of e-mail content, and no evidence of any
deletion of the e-mails by Clinton or anyone else, said Comey. Based upon
federal laws, the FBI determined, “our judgment is that no reasonable
prosecutor would bring such a case [into court].” This past week, Attorney
General Loretta Lynch announced that the Department of Justice would not pursue
felony charges against Clinton.
However, Clinton didn’t skate free. Comey
pointed out that Clinton and the Department of State were “extremely careless
in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” that “there is evidence to support a conclusion
that 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,” and that “none of these e-mails should have been
on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning
because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not
even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and
Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.”
House Speaker Paul
Ryan said the FBI recommendation not to prosecute Clinton “defies
explanation.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) questioned Comey’s
integrity, although Cruz had voted to confirm him in 2013 to be FBI director.
Comey, a Republican, was first appointed U.S. Attorney and then deputy attorney
general during the Bush–Cheney administration.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican
nominee who had spent much of the primaries calling Ted Cruz a liar, after Cruz
dropped out of the race now threw venom on Clinton, innumerous times calling
her a liar and a crook. Following the press conference, Trump said “the system
is rigged . . . very unfair! As usual, bad judgment.” He then launched an attack upon
Lynch, stating, without evidence, “It’s a bribe. . . The Attorney General is
sitting there saying, ‘If I get Hillary off the hook, I’m going to have four
more years or eight more years. But if she loses, I’m out of a job.’ It’s a
bribe. It’s a disgrace.” Trump also bellowed, continuing his campaign of
shoving misinformation in front of the voters, that President Obama was part of
a conspiracy to drop charges against Clinton.
The FBI’s recommendation, said Republican
National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, was “a glaring indictment of Hillary Clinton’s
complete lack of judgment, honesty, and preparedness to be our next
commander-in-chief, and they confirm what we’ve long known: Hillary Clinton has
spent the last 16 months looking into cameras deliberately lying to the
American people.”
The conservatives,
especially Trump, will continue to push Benghazi and e-mails, no matter what
the evidence shows, and will be looking for anything they can find that may
lead to another scandal—and several million dollars to investigate it. They who
have lied to be elected and continue to chop apart truth will push to have a
hearing they hope will result in Clinton being held in contempt of Congress for
lying.
As far
as Clinton is concerned, there have been many lessons from the Benghazi and
e-mail scandals, but the major one is that a candidate can’t allow the
opposition to control the message, but must be open and, if wrong, apologize
and correct a problem before it explodes.
[Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist,
has covered government/politics for more than four decades. His latest book is Fracking America.]
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