Our Banana Republic
FBI’s baffling Hillary rescue
MAYBE FBI chief James Comey didn’t want to hand the 2016 presidential election to the erratic Donald Trump when he decided not to recommend any charges against Hillary Clinton for her insanely dumb and so obviously improper use of a private e-mail server to receive topsecret documents as President Obama’s secretary of state.
Or maybe, in some odd way, this longtime gumshoe really believes that what Clinton did — sending and receiving sensitive information on a private and very hackable e-mail account — isn’t so bad and thus doesn’t deserve to be addressed with even a slap-on-the-wrist charge like a misdemeanor.
Either way, by ignoring the findings of his agents — which have been documented on these pages, and which he documented in a bizarre press conference Tuesday — Comey has done his best to move rule of law in this country one big step closer to that of a banana republic.
Not that we as a nation weren’t well on the way to becoming a place where criminality hinges less on the facts than on emotions and, of course, politics. Think all those post-financial-crisis insidertrading cases against alleged fatcats later overturned for lack of evidence, and also the pass given to certain Wall Streeters who did some really bad things but, luckily for them, had ties to the Democratic Party.
Now come the events of the past week, and the mother of all passes just given to Clinton — which would be panned as totally unbelievable were they in an episode of “House of Cards.”
As the feds’ investigation neared completion, former president Bill Clinton holds an impromptu meeting with the lawenforcement official who could indict his wife: US Attorney General Loretta Lynch — who, like her boss in the Oval Office, has a lot hanging on a Hillary presidency. (As does Bill.)
The two explain the whole thing as nothing more than an innocent conversation about grandkids and golf — nothing about of- ficial DOJ business that has been consuming both of them for the past year.
But appearances matter, of course, so Lynch says she’s going to turn the matter over to the incorruptible Jim Comey, the FBI chief — to determine if Hillary really did anything wrong.
Yet, after months of investigating, and being urged by his staff that there was evidence Clinton did indeed violate federal laws while using her private server, Comey miraculously shows up over the weekend and interviews Hillary about the e-mail mess.
Then miraculously (again), another 48 hours later Comey all but clears Clinton, who’s now free to fly with Obama on Air Force One for some much-needed campaigning to ensure a third Obama term.
And you wonder why many Americans are willing to nominate a reality TV star as president.
What makes this whole sordid set of facts so damning is that before yesterday, Comey was considered one of the nation’s most trusted and apolitical beat cops. He was, after all, appointed US attorney for the Southern District by a Republican president, George W. Bush, and FBI chief by a Democrat, Obama.
Indeed, when Lynch all but turned the case over to him last week, many (including me) believed the rule of law would actually prevail, particularly since FBI staffers made no secret in law-enforcement circles that they believed Clinton’s conduct merited some legal rebuke.
But Tuesday Comey was any- thing but apolitical. Yes, he said he found lots of classified stuff passing through Clinton’s personal e-mail server that shouldn’t have been. He said “there is evidence that [Clinton and her team] were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified” information and that “there is evidence of potential violations of the statute regarding the handling of classified information.”
Yes, there are laws that make sure government officials use government e-mail accounts that are more secure and easier to monitor for possible abuse than those kept on private servers monitored by no one, except possibly someone at the Clinton Foundation.
And yet Comey said there was no case to be made because Hillary didn’t show enough “intent” to violate the laws. This is coming from a guy who as Manhattan US attorney once indicted a Wall Street banker for a 22-word e-mail that could’ve been construed three different ways. (The case was later successfully appealed and, after a deferred-prosecution agreement, put to rest.)
I’m certain Trump will use Comey’s words against Clinton, and he may well succeed given the absurdity of what just went down. In the meantime, the real loser is the rule of law and, of course, the American people, who have to live in a country that might soon be renamed “The Banana Republic of America.”