Are We No Longer a Nation of Laws?
Contemplation of Justice Image Credit: Flickr.com/dbking
American Exceptionalism is an ideology based on the concept we rule ourselves through our government representatives, and that government is strictly limited to the powers listed for it in the Constitution. Implicit in the idea is the notion that all are equal before the law, that we are a nation ruled by laws, and not by men. This distinction is now threatened by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
The Case Against Hillary Clinton
The FBI has certainly thought for more than a year that Clinton had very probably committed several felonies in bringing highly classified information onto her private email server. They have for more than a year committed reportedly dozens of agents on a criminal investigation of her activities. When I first wrote about her troubles in the post Bernie Sanders Is Probably the Democrats’ Nominee, there was a general opinion that whether or not the FBI would recommend the seeking of an indictment against her would be determined sometime in May. Yet, here we are in the middle of June and the matter is still not decided. We will know the decision will be soon at hand when the FBI interviews Clinton, which will be the final part of the investigation. What could possibly be holding the FBI up?
Certainly, it is not for any lack of evidence she violated a U.S. statute. The statute in question is 18 U.S. Code § 793, subsection f. This statute, also known as the Espionage Act of 1917, declares in that particular subsection
Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Notice this particular section of the statute does not say the government must prove the accused to have had intent to violate the statute; the government needs only to prove one of two things:
- The accused “through gross negligence permits the same [the classified information] to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed,” or
- The accused “having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer.”
If the government can prove either of these two cases, Ms. Clinton will be “fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
I emphasize this point because I have read much speculation Clinton could not be indicted because the government could never prove intent on Clinton’s part to violate the law. Intent has no part in this violation. All that is required is to show “gross negligence … permits the same [the classified information] to be removed from its proper place of custody …” Alternatively, the government would have to show she allowed someone else to remove the material from “its proper place of custody.”
In both Bernie Sanders Is Probably the Democrats’ Nominee and in The Noose Tightens on Hillary Clinton, I noted that the Inspector General (IG) for the intelligence community, I. Charles McCullough III, had sent a letter to Congressmen on the applicable oversight committees of the Senate and the House of what had been found to date on Clinton’s email servers. You can read that letter, which was unclassified, in its entirety here. In it McCullough writes
To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one IC [intelligence community] element. These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and TOP SECRET/SAP levels. According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources. Due to the presence of TOP SECRET/SAP information, I provided these declarations under separate cover to the Intelligence oversight committees and Senate and House Leadership. The IC element is coordinating with State to determine how these documents should be properly treated in the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] litigation.
Of particular concern are the emails with TOP SECRET/SAP information. The SAP suffix indicates the TOP SECRET/SAP data was so sensitive that only those with both a Top Secret clearance and special needs to the information — as evidenced by being on a specified list — should be able to access it. SAP stands for Special Access Program, and TOP SECRET material so labeled is the most sensitive of all sensitive information. It is the kind of material that could get friendlies killed or hostiles to evade being killed if it should fall into unfriendly hands. I know from personal experience these programs are of such a nature it is generally a felony to take the information outside of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF (pronounced “skiff”).
Hillary Clinton’s unsecured private email servers were anything but SCIFs, as there are reports they have been hacked by a colorful Romanian hacker self-styled “Gucifer”. Gucifer apparently distributed Clinton’s emails to hundreds of recipients on email distribution lists. At least two of these recipients were in the Russian Federation. Gucifer also sent the emails to around two dozen reporters working for Russian newspapers such as Pravda, the Moscow Times, the St. Petersburg Times, and the RT news channel. There is additional evidence that Russia almost certainly has hacked her servers at least five times. Also there is evidence her server was hacked by China, South Korea, and Germany. Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden declared on the Hugh Hewitt Show, when asked if he thought Russians and others gained access to Clinton’s server, that “I would lose respect, I would lose all respect for scores of intelligence services around the world if they did not have all the access they wanted to that server.”
The Status of Hillary Clinton’s Case
As far as we know the FBI has yet to depose Hillary Clinton, so possibly we are not yet at the point of decision. Nevertheless, why the FBI has not moved with more dispatch is very troubling. According to the National Review post The Justice Department’s Hillary Stonewall, the FBI may have recommended seeking an indictment already with Justice refusing to act on it. The FBI has the power to investigate possible criminality and to recommend or not recommend to Justice they seek an indictment. They can not force Justice to seek the indictment. So what happens if Justice decides to just sit on the recommendation? There has also been the suggestion that if the issue could be delayed past the November election, President Obama could pardon Clinton “for the good of the country.”
By all accounts, FBI director James Comey is a man of immense integrity. If Comey decides Justice is trying to drag its feet in a recommendation to indict, trying perhaps to delay the case beyond the election, he might well resign in protest and leaks from the FBI to the press might well proliferate. What happens then is anybody’s guess, but such a result could easily be just as damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes as if she were indicted.
The Road to Serfdom
If the Obama administration succeeds in installing Hillary Clinton as the next President essentially untouched by her crimes, there will be hell to pay. For if that happens the United States will have lost its exceptionalism, having become a country ruled by men rather than by laws.
Indeed, that unholy event would show just how far we have traveled down Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom [E2]. If you have never read of Hayek’s ideas about increasing government economic control leading to totalitarian government, take a look at these reminiscences of Hayek by the late, great Milton Friedman.
Already, under the influence of progressivism, we have come far down the road toward authoritarian government. Every little bit of economic power the state arrogates adds to their ability to enforce their beliefs on the rest of us. If we abandon the rule of law for the rule of man (or woman), all hope is lost. That is what Hillary Clinton really promises us.
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