At least 99% of the time when a citizen appears before the judge account receiving a speeding-ticket and offers the explanation of not knowing he was speeding, the judge will proclaim ignorance as no excuse and levies the fine. This is essentially comparable to FBI Director Comey’s predicament regarding Hillary Clinton and the accursed unprotected private server(s) in her basement and elsewhere upon which she conducted the nation’s business.
After brilliantly making the case that Clinton was guilty as sin in his official/shocking announcement of her innocence, Comey, in the House hearing on the matter, reckoned that perhaps she was simply not sophisticated enough to recognize the markings of “top secret” on her emails, even though she had been a senator and, more damning, the secretary of state and therefore exposed to those markings for years as a matter of course.
Using a private server, whether protected or not, she surely knew was an absolute no-no and might have put many people in danger since hackers in other governments and even ISIS could have gained access to classified material including names and places. Comey as well as said that anyone else in government who did what Clinton did would be cashiered if not charged with a crime. Security clearance would be out of the question. Imagine a president without security clearance.
Possible lack of sophistication was an amazing conclusion on his part and an insult concerning her level of understanding. Even more amazing was Comey’s assertion that during his office’s investigation no one monitored her appearances before congressional committees, something any citizen could do just using C-Span or any other network covering them. He did indicate that she lied in those hearings but not to the FBI and said that a referral from Congress was necessary to monitor them, something beyond belief.
This, of course, left her open to perjury charges since she was under oath in the hearings so it would seem that AG Lynch would insist on action concerning that matter. She, however, has said the case is closed, meaning that Clinton can get on with her campaigning, and Obama let Air Force One be her campaign commute to North Carolina right after Comey had insisted that not even the president knew when and what his report would be. Obviously, this was not true since the president would never have allowed that excursion absent the supposed privileged information already being in his possession.
Comey let her off the hook, he said, because an intent to do wrong was not provable. The speeder alluded to above probably did not intend to do wrong, either, and was just careless but that made no difference to the judge. It made a difference to Comey, who said that Clinton was “extremely careless,” so that apparently was okay because her carelessness handling secret documents did not rise to the culpability level of speeding.
This affair explains why people have such a deep distrust of government. Add into the mix that Bill Clinton had a 30-minute tete-a-tete with AG Lynch just before Comey’s announcement that he said nobody knew about…and the plot thickens…or sickens...or both. The agents guarding that meeting declared that no pictures or recordings of it could be made, as if that could happen.
So now the State Department is having its own investigation. This is John Kerry’s turf. Will he consider if Clinton receives any more briefings or a security clearance given that, as Comey might say, she is irresponsible and either stupid or is not acquainted with truth-telling…sort of like her humongous subterfuge regarding the Benghazi massacre, in which the president participated.
The whitewash is in. Comey cited the law concerning this matter but indicated that it had been used only once in 99 years so, presumably, couldn’t be used again. What rubbish! Resignations are in order. Don’t count on that!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment