Above the Law

Guy Benson at Townhall dissects the State Department's Inspector General's disclosures concerning the IG's investigation of Secretary Clinton's use of a private email server. It turns out that she didn't just flout a few State Department regulations, she also violated federal law and has thereby is in jeopardy of having committed a felony:

The new, damning report directly refutes a number of insistent statements Mrs. Clinton and her allies have issued over the last 15 months. Many of her assertions at an initial press conference in March 2015 have been demonstrably proven to be inaccurate and deceitful. The list of falsehoods has now expanded.

The report concluded that Clinton violated the agency’s email rules when she chose to exclusively use a private email server during her four years at State Department and did not promptly turn over records after she departed the agency.

“At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

An official at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the former acting director of the CIA, and the former Secretary of Defense have all said that it's a virtual certainty that hostile foreign governments were able to access Clinton's unsecure server.

I'll leave you with a few refreshers: Hillary Clinton claimed none of the emails on her bootleg server were classified, and that she personally didn't send any classified materials. There were, in fact, more than 2,000 classified emails on that server, including top secret and above top secret information -- with dozens that were classified at the time (she signed a sworn agreement to protect all secret data, regardless of whether it was marked as such). She personally sent more than 100 of them.

Hillary Clinton was explicitly warned, and acknowledged the warning, that her improper and vulnerable email arrangement endangered sensitive material in 2011. Undeterred by the clear threat her behavior posed, she carried on with her reckless system through the end of her tenure. Hillary Clinton has lied about nearly every facet of this story, from start to finish. Soon, the Obama Justice Department will have to determine whether her conduct was grossly negligent, and therefore criminal.

By using a secret, unsanctioned, and unsecured private e-mail server, housed in a bathroom, for official State Department correspondence, Clinton put the lives of numerous Americans at risk, the IG report found.

We also learn from the IG's report what we already knew, viz. that she lied to just about everyone about almost every aspect of her use of this private server and utterly refused to cooperate in the investigation.

One final observation: The Clinton's have consistently imputed accusations of their wrong-doing to partisan political enemies trying to smear them, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" as Mrs. Clinton famously described it, but that dodge isn't open to them on this one. This is the Obama State Department.

Exit questions:

1. Will the Obama Justice Department set ideology and politics aside and abide by the rule of law and indict Mrs. Clinton?

2. If Mrs. Clinton is convicted after she's elected president can she pardon herself?

3. If she's convicted would Senate Democrats have the moral fiber to take a stand on principle and vote against her if the House impeaches her?

I suspect the answer to all three questions is No. Is it unreasonable to think so?