(02-06-2018 08:00 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: My bottom line.
You can say what you want about Mueller and Comey and Trump and Strzok and all the rest. But the fact that Hillary is not behind bars says that there’s something rotten somewhere.
Well, you're assuming she would have been convicted by a jury, which seems objectively at least questionable, and then even if she had been, that she would have been given a jail sentence rather than probation (although not being a federal criminal lawyer I confess no knowledge of what category of offense this would have been and whether probation would have been an option under the guidelines). Yes, a prosecution likely could have proven the requisite elements, especially since intent was/is not an element. But you still would have had to get 12 (10? 8? federal courts don't always use 12) jurors (in D.C. or the Southern District of New York, no less) to unanimously convict the most famous AND the most infamous woman in the country. She would have had a defense dream team and probably would have mounted a fairly appealing "everyone does it, no big deal" defense that would have included evidence of various Republicans doing the same thing (perhaps to lesser degrees) than she did. Personally I would have put the odds of a hung jury at 80+%, acquittal (or jury nullification if you'd prefer to call it that, and I wouldn't argue) at 19+%, and conviction at <1%.
Comey took the middle option that probably most people in his shoes would have taken. He knew the DOJ (the Obama DOJ) was going to decline to prosecute Hillary no matter what he did. That is just a realpolitik fact. So Comey's options were: (1) recommend prosecution, then loudly resign in protest when the recommendation was rejected -- which would make him look petulant and kneecap the remainder of his career; (2) say nothing beyond "I sent my confidential recommendation to the AG, what she chooses to do with it is up to her" -- which would have been extremely helpful to Hillary, in that there would have been no counter-narrative to whatever a pro-Hillary Loretta Lynch would have said; (3) go even farther and curry favor with Obama/Lynch/Clinton by issuing a statement that twisted itself in knots to exonerate her -- which would have made him a hack, something he pretty clearly had too much ethics to abide; or (4) do what he did.
The crime Hillary committed was ultimately and always a political one (unless it could ever have been shown that some true national secret fell into enemy hands because of her actions, some asset was lost, etc.). So her trial was left to be a political one as well. And lo and behold she actually was convicted--and punished--in the political forum, barely perhaps, but justice was achieved nonetheless. The punishment fit the crime perfectly: She was patently not fit to be president, and so she was not allowed to be president. For the record, I am sorry that the collateral beneficiary of her loss also had to be a patently unfit person. He, too, shall pass from the stage eventually.
The ironic part of this hairsplitting over "extremely careless" or "grossly negligent" is that everyone with half a brain knows she went far and fully beyond whatever these words mean. The LAST thing Hillary Clinton is is "extremely careless." She is a meticulous, paranoid, venal control freak of the highest order (a trait not uncommon among politicians on both sides of the aisle). We ALL know that SHE knew EXACTLY what she was doing in setting up that server, and there was no oopsy-daisy about it. She wanted to keep her emails from public discovery and potential use against her in some future campaign - and I'm not even talking about Clinton Foundation graft or whatever. No politician ever wants to leave a paper trail of ANYTHING if they can help it, because even the innocuous stuff can probably be used somehow. And the second-to-last thing Hillary Clinton is is innocuous, anyway. She operates in gray areas and knew there would be something useful to a future opponent.
Comey may have spared Clinton the expense (if any there would have been, as inevitably there would have been a Clinton Defense Fund) of a trial (that she would have won, or at least not lost, anyway) but not only did he publicly rip her for her behavior, in letting her off, he solidified her (deserved) reputation for being let off where others would not be, being allowed to play by different rules, float above the law, etc. That stain cannot, could not, and did not wash off.
