At a time when the Trump presidency is under growing assault, it is perhaps not strange to see Trump’s opponents trying to resurrect the reputation of the woman he defeated, Hillary Clinton.
It is all the more understandable given the serious questions being raised about the candidacies of the Democratic front-runners. Joe Biden’s staying power and endurance is becoming more and more suspect, and the socialist, break-the-bank agendas of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are being greeted with ever-increasing skepticism.
Thus, a Hillary candidacy in 2020 may well be attractive to desperate party leaders eager to put up someone more credible against a president who seems unusually able to weather political confrontation. That might explain why The New York Times decided to run an article last week and a follow-up editorial two days later about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
It reported:
[A] years long State Department investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server found that while the use of the system for official business increased the risk of compromising classified information, there was no systematic or deliberate mishandling of classified information….
While there were some instances of classified information being inappropriately introduced into an unclassified system in furtherance of expedience, by and large, the individuals interviewed were aware of security policies and did their best to implement them in their operations…. There was no persuasive evidence of systematic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.
In its editorial on the subject, The Times cites the above as an exoneration, chides President Trump for accusing her of criminality over the server, and notes that the report “comes after the FBI determined months before the [2016] election, that, while Mrs. Clinton was ‘extremely careless’ in having a private email server for government communications, she did nothing illegal.”
Putting aside the curious “by and large” and “did their best” language, the lingering concern about the Clinton e-mail episode is how FBI Director James Comey came to amend his original characterization of her actions as “grossly negligent,” which is a crime under federal law, to “extremely careless,” which is not. Some claim he told investigators that he was ordered to do so by Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Also of crucial importance is Comey’s public testimony that Mrs. Clinton lied to the FBI at least six times about her private server use. A lot of people were sent to jail by Robert Mueller for a lot less. How, then, has Mrs. Clinton escaped prosecution – not for using the server, but for covering it up?
We’ll probably see more and more of this sort of thing as Democrats go deeper and deeper into a panic mode about their prospects for 2020. But we just thought a little heads up was in order.