THE WASHINGTON POST’S CLINTON EMAIL EDITORIAL

The Washington Post has published an editorial about the Hillary Clinton email scandal – or, as the Post’s editorial board apparently sees it, the nothing-with-nothing non-event.

Here it is…in rust, with my comments in blue:

NO DOUBT it’s difficult to refuse a visit with a former president of the United States. Still, Attorney General Loretta Lynch should have found a polite way to excuse herself when Bill Clinton dropped by her airplane, parked next to his at a Phoenix airport Monday. Given that Ms. Lynch has ultimate responsibility for the federal investigation related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, even an impromptu chat between the attorney general and the candidate’s husband was bound to create questionable appearances — even if its actual content was purely social, as Ms. Lynch maintains and as we believe.  What a truckload of mung.  

WHY does the Washington Post believe this was 100% inadvertent and purely social? This “inadvertent, purely social” conversation lasted a half-hour, took place out on the tarmac somewhere, and the FBI people were instructing anyone who saw it that there could be no pictures, no recordings and no cell phone usage.  Does that come across as just an innocent little chit-chat to you?   And this, of course, is before we get to the fact that both Bill and his wife, the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, can be indicted by Ms. Lynch.  The impropriety of this meeting is so obvious a second grader would know not to have it … unless, of course, the reason for its taking place is specifically to discuss what would make it improprietous.

To her credit, Ms. Lynch acknowledged her misstep Friday in an interview with The Post’s Jonathan Capehart at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. Only after being questioned about it.  She described the cloud it created over the Justice Department’s objectivity as inaccurate but nevertheless “painful.” Equally appropriately, she said she expected to follow the lead of career prosecutors at the department in deciding what, if any, legal consequences Ms. Clinton should face due to the transmission of classified information via the unsecured server.  Another pile of BS.  She is NOT recusing herself, just saying she’ll follow what they recommend…but she’s still the one who assesses what they recommend and determines what to do about it, right?  This is so Nixonian I can almost see two arms raised with “Vee signs” and the caption “I am not a crook”.  But, this being a problem for Hillary Clinton, not Nixon’s ghost, the Washington Post is willfully blind about it.

Our view of the matter, stated in previous editorials and supported by a fair reading of the law and publicly available evidence, is that Ms. Clinton committed a grave error in judgment, compounded by a willful violation of internal State Department rules designed to ensure records were properly preserved with maximum protection against cybersecurity risks. People are supposed to go to jail for this.  She has been less than clear and forthright about all of this in her public statements. So do the people who are supposed to go to jail for this – because they are trying to stay out of jail. However, her conduct does not seem to rise to the level of indictable crime, because she did not set up and use the server with the legally requisite criminal intent or even with “gross negligence,” as it has been defined in relevant case law.  How in hell would anyone on the Washington Post editorial board know this?  What you wish for, what you’re rooting for, and what you intend to tell us,  is not the same as what reality is, guys.

The main point now, however, is that the Justice Department needs to get on with telling the public what it has concluded about Ms. Clinton’s culpability. Ms. Lynch’s faux pas is but a relatively minor example of the sort of political accidents that are still waiting to happen as long as this matter remains up in the air. Relatively minor?  That’s like Obama calling ISIS a “jayvee squad”.  Of far greater moment is the fact that Ms. Clinton is a candidate for president and, indeed, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee. She and, more importantly, the voters who would ultimately judge her deserve some clarity about her legal liability — one way or the other. It appears that a direct interview with the former secretary is one of the last pieces that the Federal Bureau of Investigation needs to finish this puzzle. Both Ms. Clinton and the FBI should make it happen as soon as possible, and then the latter should publish its findings with all deliberate speed.  Oh, you want speed?  Who held this investigation up, as long as she could?  How nice of you to ignore the REASON it is taking this long, thus the REASON it has continued right into the presidential campaign.  Even the usually Clinton-friendly CNN couldn’t abide this, but the Washington Post editorial board sure can.  And Hillary-2016 thanks you, I’m sure.

Who is making more sense here?  You decide.