December 27, 2017--Lock Them Up

I know in advance that I'm going to get into trouble for this one. Therefore let me approach it carefully--

Unless you were checked into a hotel yesterday you probably didn't see USA Today. Therefore you would have missed the lead story, "Justice Probe Looms As Possible Landmine for Mueller."

The probe is not the Mueller investigation but one underway concurrently, largely out of the headlines, being conducted by the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, to investigate the government's contentious handling of the Hillary Clinton email inquiry. 

Theoretically these two investigations could proceed on separate tracks. But daily they are being conflated. In part because Donald Trump, his lawyers, Trump flacks in Congress, and especially Fox News are using what the inspector general is turning up (the FBI investigation of Clinton's emails, it must be admitted, was botched) to beat up on the independence of the Mueller probe.

Most damaging to the credibility of the investigation of Trump and his inner circle is the case of two members of Mueller's staff--FBI senior counter-intelligence agent Peter Strzok and bureau lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for both investigations and, here's the looming problem, Strzok and Page are a couple and exchanged personal emails on government servers that disparaged President Trump, thus calling into question aspects of Mueller's emerging findings.

Fox folks like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and the preposterous hosts of Fox & Friends (Trump's favorite morning TV program) are all over this as have been the bloviating rightwing radio talkshow hosts. Some have been calling for Mueller to be taken out in handcuffs. "Lock him up."

In truth, this is troubling to the Mueller investigation as it calls its fair-mindedness into question. Even though Mueller himself is a Republican that does not inure him from semi-legitimate charges that (some of) the work of his team is tainted.

So, here's my thought--

Rather than resisting the investigation of Hillary Clinton and, more broadly the Clintons, Democrats and liberals should support it. 

There is enough credible concern about her tenure as secretary of state and of the Clinton Foundation that any independent-minded person could responsibly call for all of that to be looked into.

It also would be politically smart to want this investigation to proceed. It is hypocritical to call for a close examination of Trump and his people while calling the Clinton probe political persecution.

We need to keep an eye on the big picture--the investigation of Trump and ultimately holding him and his enablers responsible for a host of offenses. 

Just as Al Franken needed to be pressed to resign in order to, with a straight face, demand that Roy Moore in Alabama be held accountable for his offenses--even though they were not morally equivalent--Trump and Hillary Clinton should be held to the same standard.

August 15, 2016--No Daylight

With Donald Trump searching desperately to remain in the media spotlight and as a result of that and his proclivities descending deeper and deeper into political trouble; with the drip, drip, drip of Republican defections (Maine Senator Susan Collins is the most recent GOP leader to announce that she will not vote for Trump); with his candidacy in free fall and Hillary Clinton opening up an unprecedented 10-or-more-point lead, it is time to call for expanded press scrutiny of Clinton to learn more (if that's possible) about her character and fitness to be president, since it seems virtually certain now that she will in November be elected to serve as the United States' 45th chief executive--for these reasons it is imperative that media resources such as the New York Times pause in their daily assault on everything Trump and turn the same investigative energy to things Clinton.

Case in point the blasé way in which the Times has been dealing with the dump of thousands of new Hillary Clinton emails which this time move beyond exposing the "extremely careless," at best quasi-legal way in which she used her personal email account and server to conduct top secret State Department business, to now peeling back the veil that has obscured the ways in which she abandoned her pledge to President Obama in 2009 to sever all ties to the work (read, raising up to $3.0 billion) of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and Global Initiative while serving as his Secretary of State.

The Clinton Times story, "New Questions About Overlap Between Clinton State Dept. and Charity" gets buried on page A10 while stories about Trump "topping out" among registered Republican voters or how his "camp is falling to tame his tongue" becomes the lead story on the front page.

His, political process stories; hers, about fitness to assume the presidency. Not by any measure of equal consequence.

The Clinton story is not new. It has rattled around for years.

Here's how it appears things worked while she was Secretary of State--major donors to the Clinton "charity" were given expedited access to State Department officials when they had matters of personal advantage to bring to the attention of the right people or received favorable fast-tracked decisions and exemptions if one of Clinton's deputies winked in the right direction.

These deputies included Cheryl Mills and the ubiquitous Huma Abedin, both of whom somehow managed to be on both the Clinton Foundation and State Department payrolls. Or perhaps as Mills claims, in one assignment or another, they did Clinton bidding as "volunteers." At least, so they say.

The conservative but credible advocacy group, Judicial Watch, through the Freedom of Information Act, secured this latter cache of emails which, they demonstrated by quoting, reveal that between the State Department and the foundation, "there was no daylight."

As texts of the emails attest, JW got that right. And now it is passed time for the New York Times to also get things right.

May 26, 2016--Hillary Clinton: Drip, Drip, Drip

World War III will have to wait to Friday because there is breaking news--

I wrote and posted what follows on July 27, 2015. About a year ago.

It feels appropriate to republish it in the light of the scathing report revealed yesterday by the State Department regarding Hillary Clinton's use, while Secretary of State, of a personal email server.

This report we should note is not from a partisan Republican source or candidate but from a Democratic State Department. Among other things the department's inspector general concluded that this was not authorized or permitted by State Department rules.

The next drip will be from the FBI, with whom Clinton will soon be testifying. In the light of this new report, an indictment would not be a surprise.

Thus far, Hillary's defenders are saying, "Colin Powell did it. So why isn't he in trouble?" The inspector general gave that answer--at the time Powell was secretary, the rules were different.

One can only imagine what the Republicans and Donald Trump will do with this.

Here, from last July--

I recently read Tim Weiner's new biography of Richard Nixon, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, which focuses on the various criminal activities of Nixon and his associates. Especially the climate that existed in the White House and in Nixon's mind that led to the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex and the subsequent coverup and resignation.

Nixon's involvement in the break-in was not direct but the result of his obsession with secrecy and feelings that there were conspiratorial forces at work that would deny his reelection in 1972. His men, thus, carried out his implied agenda.

Nixon got in deep and direct trouble when he tried to have the FBI's investigation of the break-in squelched and then led the cover-up, all the while lying by claiming he knew nothing in advance of the break-in (likely true) and knew nothing about a cover-up (patently and feloniously false).

As a result, he was brought down, named an "unindicted co-conspirator," and forced to resign the presidency.

This brings me to Hillary Clinton and the many problems with her emails while she was Secretary of State.

For whatever reasons, rather than use secure State Department channels of communication, she used her own, personal email account to carry out official business. There is no disputing that.

But under pressure, when news about this began to leak out earlier this year, she denied any wrongdoing, claiming what she did was neither against federal rules nor, much more significant, was not in any way illegal.

Under further pressure, she turned over to the State Department 30,000 official emails from her private server, deleting other thousands of a personal nature--for example, those about plans for her daughter Chelsea's wedding.

All along the way she alleged this was a non-issue, driven more by presidential politics then anything else. She held herself above the fray, claiming she had more important things to focus on--how to build an agenda, for example, to strengthen the economy, one that especially helps the middle class.

But the issue just wouldn't go away.

Daily, it is becoming clear that there are legitimate and substantial issues that were not just the result of Republican saber-rattling. As more and more was leaked and reported about what was in the actual emails, it became clearer and clearer that there is a there there.

Just at the end of last week, the New York Times, which broke the original email story in March, reported that some of Clinton's emails included classified information, which, if true, is potentially illegal.

The State Department inspector general joined by the intelligence community's independent inspector general issued a joint statement which revealed that their review of a random sample of just 40 of the former Secretary's emails revealed that four did in fact contain classified material, "Government secrets."

Clinton's response was again that this is a distraction and that nothing untoward occurred on her watch.

The two inspectors general would disagree. In fact, they recommended that an investigation be launched. A criminal investigation. Clinton didn't quite say, "I am not a crook." But . . .

It is significant to note again that the intelligence community's inspector general is a non-partisan and that though the State Department is Obama's State Department, and thus controlled by Democrats, its inspector general did not hold back.

This is feeling like the same kind of drip, drip, drip that didn't work to defend Nixon. He pretended that he was ignoring the Watergate investigation, claiming he was too busy defending the world and defeating Communism. The tapes of his White House offices and telephones put the lie to that. He was obsessed by Watergate and the judicial and congressional investigations and was active daily counseling and coaching his confederates about what to say and which lies to tell.

I suspect Hillary Clinton in dong much the same thing. I mean obsessing. She knows the truth and we are learning more about it every week. I suspect there will be an outcome similar to Nixon's--her emails are not unlike his tapes. There are likely numerous smoking guns in them and I would be surprised if Clinton is able to stay in the race for the presidential nomination. Polls are already showing she trails Jeb Bush and Scott Walker in key battleground states. This will only get worse as we learn more.

It's time for Democrats to be thinking about serious alternatives. It wouldn't surprise me to see Joe Biden join the race and perhaps John Kerry. Elizabeth Warren may also be rethinking her decision not to run.

Who knows, by fall a Democrat clown car might be revving up.

I am not a crook.

July 27, 2015--HillaryGate: Drip, Drip, Drip

I recently read Tim Weiner's new biography of Richard Nixon, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, which focuses on the various criminal activities of Nixon and his associates. Especially the climate that existed in the White House and in Nixon's mind that led to the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex and the subsequent coverup and resignation.

Nixon's involvement in the break-in was not direct but the result of his obsession with secrecy and feelings that there were conspiratorial forces at work that would deny his reelection in 1972. His men, thus, carried out his implied agenda.

Nixon got in deep and direct trouble when he tried to have the FBI's investigation of the break-in squelched and then led the cover-up, all the while lying by claiming he knew nothing in advance of the break-in (likely true) and knew nothing about a cover-up (patently and feloniously false).

As a result, he was brought down, named an "unindicted co-conspirator," and forced to resign the presidency.

This brings me to Hillary Clinton and the many problems with her emails while she was Secretary of State.

For whatever reasons, rather than use secure State Department channels of communication, she used her own, personal email account to carry out official business. There is no disputing that.

But under pressure, when news about this began to leak out earlier this year, she denied any wrongdoing, claiming what she did was neither against federal rules nor, much more significant, was not in any way illegal.

Under further pressure, she turned over to the State Department 30,000 official emails from her private server, deleting other thousands of a personal nature--for example, those about plans for her daughter Chelsea's wedding.

All along the way she alleged this was a non-issue, driven more by presidential politics then anything else. She held herself above the fray, claiming she had more important things to focus on--how to build an agenda, for example, to strengthen the economy, one that especially helps the middle class.

But the issue just wouldn't go away.

Daily, it is becoming clear that there are legitimate and substantial issues that were not just the result of Republican saber-rattling. As more and more was leaked and reported about what was in the actual emails, it became clearer and clearer that there is a there there.

Just at the end of last week, the New York Times, which broke the original email story in March, reported that some of Clinton's emails included classified information, which, if true, is potentially illegal.

The State Department inspector general joined by the intelligence community's independent inspector general issued a joint statement which revealed that their review of a random sample of just 40 of the former Secretary's emails revealed that four did in fact contain classified material, "Government secrets."

Clinton's response was again that this is a distraction and that nothing untoward occurred on her watch.

The two inspectors general would disagree. In fact, they recommended that an investigation be launched. A criminal investigation. Clinton didn't quite say, "I am not a crook." But . . .

It is significant to note again that the intelligence community's inspector general is a non-partisan and that though the State Department is Obama's State Department, and thus controlled by Democrats, its inspector general did not hold back.

This is feeling like the same kind of drip, drip, drip that didn't work to defend Nixon. He pretended that he was ignoring the Watergate investigation, claiming he was too busy defending the world and defeating Communism. The tapes of his White House offices and telephones put the lie to that. He was obsessed by Watergate and the judicial and congressional investigations and was active daily counseling and coaching his confederates about what to say and which lies to tell.

I suspect Hillary Clinton in dong much the same thing. I mean obsessing. She knows the truth and we are learning more about it every week. I suspect there will be an outcome similar to Nixon's--her emails are not unlike his tapes. There are likely numerous smoking guns in them and I would be surprised if Clinton is able to stay in the race for the presidential nomination. Polls are already showing she trails Jeb Bush and Scott Walker in key battleground states. This will only get worse as we learn more.

It's time for Democrats to be thinking about serious alternatives. It wouldn't surprise me to see Joe Biden join the race and perhaps John Kerry. Elizabeth Warren may also be rethinking her decision not to run.

Who knows, by fall a Democrat clown car might be revving up.

I am not a crook.