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Quick Analysis

Crime and Non-punishment

The political scandals of 2017 are unlike anything seen before in American history. They include the  continued lack of indictment concerning the personal enrichment of a sitting Secretary of State via the provision of  key nuclear weapons material to a hostile nation; the unaddressed abuse of federal intelligence agencies to surveil political rivals in the 2016 campaign; and the apparently baseless charges of “Russian Collusion” against the current president being investigated (despite a lack of any substance to the allegation) by a politically biased special prosecutor who has hired supporters of the defeated candidate to do the research.

Liability for the acts in question are not limited to the direct perpetrators.  It extends to an entire network of federal officials who facilitated, through assistance, acquiescence, or neglect, the crimes in questions. Former FBI Director James Comey, despite the obvious nature of Clinton’s acts regarding both the uranium deal and her mishandling of emails, completely failed in his duty. Revelations that he prepared to exonerate the former Secretary of State before a formal investigation was even partially completed have provided even greater weight to the increasingly abundant body of evidence that he replaced his loyalty to the FBI and the American people with partisanship. Despite that reality, the media severely criticized President Trump for firing him.

While misdeeds by government are frequently exposed through the media, in this case, a very substantial portion of the press, through its refusal to provide honest journalistic practices, has become a party to them.

Some outlets, however, have done exceptional due diligence.  The Hill deserves particular credit for its ongoing expose of events surrounding Hillary Clinton’s uranium-related transactions with Moscow—and the complicity of Obama Administration officials. John Solomon and Alison Spann recently wrote: “the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering.”  Their report notes that there was a “violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” according to official document.  “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit the Clinton Foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill…Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.”

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Despite the Obama/Clinton Administration’s tenure-wide tilt towards Moscow, including giving Russia, for the first time in history, a lead in nuclear weapons, providing only weak sanctions in response to the invasion of Ukraine, and giving in to Putin’s demands about America’s missile defense, a myth was propagated that Trump’s campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election.  The desperate to find something—anything—to provide some substance to the charge has been an embarrassment both to those who first propagated the story and to those journalists who ignored the lack of evidence and continue to tout it.

Cheryl K. Chumley, writing for the Washington Times notes that “The tables have turned and what was once the media’s favorite message — President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election — has now grown silent. Apparently, it’s Bill and Hillary Clinton who’ve been doing the behind-scenes and suspicious dealings with Russia all along. Oh, and perhaps others in the Barack Obama administration, too.”

While official Washington has dragged its heels on indicting Hillary Clinton for any of the misdeeds she is implicated in, James Comey may have to worry about action from an unexpected direction.  Stephen Dinan  of The Washington Times  reports that Ty Clevenger, a New York attorney, has filed a grievance with his state’s bar association on the grounds that Comey lied to Congress and allowed the destruction of evidence in the Clinton email investigation. Clevenger’s actions could result in Comey losing his license to practice law.

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Quick Analysis

Clinton: Unfit for the White House?

The hyper-partisan environment of presidential politics is preventing an open discussion of the Clinton dilemma.

When the Clinton ethics question is raised, allies in politics and the media, well trained thanks to the unending trail of abuses of the public trust, respond vehemently, frequently alleging bias against female candidates or a fictional “vast right wing conspiracy,” intentionally ignoring the fact that Clintonian practices are sufficiently controversial to engender spontaneous opposition.

The reality is that despite the good intentions of their many supporters, the history of the Clintons is less a political movement than a criminal enterprise, in which an objective review of the records leads to a legitimate concern that official favors have been traded for personal enrichment, in a manner that may have seriously harmed the United States.

The Office of Inspector General’s Report on former Secretary Clinton’s emails  noted that “…Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary. 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…”

This, of course, is just one part of the Clinton email scandal—probably, the lesser part.  The remaining question is what is in the emails themselves, particularly those that have not been made public

For most candidates, the OIG analysis would be harmful enough. Added to the long list of Hillary Clinton’s ethical violations and consistent record of devastating Obama/Clinton policy failures as secretary of state, (the failed reset with Russia, Benghazi, ISIS, the Russian/Chinese/Iranian/North Korean nuclear arms increases, alienation of key US allies, etc.) however, it raises the very serious question of how and why she will be the candidate of a major political party for President of the United States. Indeed, some members of her own party have raised that issue, even though her only current opponent is an aged socialist with only a limited chance of winning the general election, even against a candidate as unusual as Donald Trump.

The depth of opposition from many committed Democrats comes from the reality that the Clintons are more openly for sale than any other politicians at their high level. The New York Post recently noted that “Mandatory financial disclosures released this month show that, in just the two years from April 2013 to March 2015, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state collected $21,667,000 in “speaking fees,” not to mention the cool $5 mil she corralled as an advance for her 2014 flop book, ‘Hard Choices.’ Throw in the additional $26,630,000 her ex-president husband hoovered up in personal-appearance “honoraria…”
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Other ex-holders of high political office have earned large speaking fees, as well. But they did so after having left the political arena, and in a manner in which no real suspicion was raised that the acceptance of dollars was such a direct quid-pro-quo. Hillary’s solicitation of funds from foreign governments for the Clinton Foundation, a source of personal enrichment for the Clintons, while she was serving as Secretary of State, was a blatant violation of the public trust.

Also during her tenure as Secretary of State, Judicial Watch reports billions of dollars of funds were somehow “misplaced.”

The history of Clinton scandals is in a class by itself, not only for the amounts of dollars raised, but for the potential harm not only to the public trust but to the nation as a whole.  Serious questions still remain about the relationship of China’s efforts to make illegal campaign contributions during the Bill Clinton presidency, and President Clinton’s extraordinary act of allowing the sale of a supercomputer to China.

The China issue continues.  Time Magazine has just reported thatWang Wenliang, [is] a Chinese national with U.S. permanent residency… An American company controlled by Wang made a $60,000 contribution to [Virginia Governor] McAuliffe’s campaign [McAuliffe is a very close friend of the Clintons, who recently gave the vote to over a half million convicted felons in an effort to insure that Clinton carries the state in November] three weeks before the fundraiser. Less than a month later, a separate Wang company pledged $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the first of several donations that eventually totaled $2 million.

Perhaps the most devastating ethical question surrounding Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State concerns the transfer of uranium, the substance required for the construction of nuclear weapons, to Russia. The New York Times, not known for being anti-Clinton, reported:the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain…As the Russians gradually assumed control … in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013…a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons…And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin.”

The Clintons protest that the complaints are just part of the usual partisan smear campaign. But their long and unique history, their close association with numerous ethical issues too numerous to repeat here, and the unprecedented nature of the involvement of foreign governments raises substantial issues about the inherent lack of appropriateness of another Clinton presidency.