Today’s paragraphs come to us from Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who currently writes for the conservative publication, National Review.
Here are the first three paragraphs of his take on FBI Director James Comey’s description of Hillary Clinton’s actions, and his conclusion that, despite what she did, she should not be indicted:
There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.
Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States.
In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.
Director Comey will be on Capitol Hill today, to be asked why he could possibly have come to his no-indict conclusion.
Most hearings of this kind are not worth paying attention to. This one, to say the least, is.
Andrew McCarthy wins Paragraphs Of The Day honors for so clearly explaining why.
