Hillary’s Rahm problem

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton appears to be putting politics ahead of justice when it comes to Chicago mayor and former top Clinton and Obama White House aide Rahm Emanuel. For over a year, Emanuel knew — or had no excuse not to know — that a Chicago police officer crossed a fatal line. The mayor’s inexplicable handling of the police misconduct ever since represents a profound abdication of responsibility.

It was Oct. 20, 2014, when Officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times.

At least seven other officers were already on the scene, waiting for requested backup with a Taser, when Van Dyke arrived, got out of his car and almost immediately fired at McDonald, who was about 20 feet away the closest officers and slowly retreating, then kept shooting as the teen lay felled.

All this was caught on Chicago Police Department video — one that police officials reporting directly to Emanuel most certainly saw.

But nobody said or did anything to enlighten the public, or to charge the officer, for 400 days.

Instead, the very next day, a Chicago police union spokesman said the boy had been shot while lunging at police. That false claim went uncorrected by the city.

Four months after the killing, with the video still hidden, Emanuel was forced into a runoff in his reelection bid. Two months after that, with the video still hidden, he won that runoff. A week later, the city announced it had, weeks before, struck a $5 million settlement with the McDonald family — one that committed them to keep quiet about the video.

Now, thanks to a dogged journalist, a judge finally forced the city to release the footage. Van Dyke is finally facing murder charges.

Emanuel’s frantic actions since the truth at last hit the fan have only raised more questions. He insists he’d kept the video from public view to avoid blocking probes of the killing — a claim the feds have rejected. Bizarrely, he insists he didn’t even view the video himself.

Days before its release, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy finally fired a detective who fatally shot a black woman while off duty in 2012. Days after its release, with public fury still rising, Emanuel axed McCarthy.

The mayor now promises to finally release the video of another dubious police killing — one shot, in both senses of the word, a week before McDonald. And says he is setting up an outside task force to look at his police department. And that he’s open to the Justice Department review he initially resisted.

Voters, he said, shouldn’t worry about him covering things up, since they can hold him accountable at the polls — in another three years.

Despite all that, public anger is still rising, for good reason. Add it up, and the evidence on Emanuel points in two possible directions: outrageously passive neglect or active cover up of a crime.

But so far Clinton, who vowed to “replenish our depleted reservoirs of trust” between law enforcement and communities of color, has only said, via a spokesman, that she is “deeply troubled” by the shooting and “the outstanding questions related to both the shooting and the video.”

As to Emanuel? “She knows Mayor Emanuel loves Chicago, and is sure he wants to do all he can to restore trust in the Chicago Police Department.”

Asking the mayor who spent 400 days eroding that trust to help restore it now that he’s been caught is stationing the fox outside the hen house.

If Clinton is serious about black lives — and not just black votes — this is a moment of truth.