Ali, trump and clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (the finale)
He who thinks himself invincible is his foe’s next conquest
Last week’s piece summarized why the Republican Trump was unfit for the presidency and why the Democratic Clinton has disqualified herself because of the serious breaches of national security committed as Secretary of State. In trying to explain the matter of her mishandled emails, I failed to disclose is that Clintonis actually the subject of two distinct but interrelated FBI criminal investigations. She is the subject of a public corruption investigation attempting to ascertain whether she used her office to solicit funds for the Clinton Foundation. This investigation is related to the email story because the initial evidence suggesting abuse of office is derived from the trove of emails on the Clinton private server.
The evidence mounts against her by the week. Clinton publicly claimed this was but a routine “security inquiry.” The FBI director retorted his agency does not perform security inquiries. This is a criminal investigation said he.
Clinton turned over 30,000 emails but thought she destroyed an equal number which she said were personal in nature. To her chagrin, the FBI was able to recoup the mass of the destroyed documentsfrom others sources and is currently vetting those documents. A portion of these have been released in several noncriminal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Refuting her claim, over 100 of these emails are clearly work related. Several of them were written by her and regard the vulnerabilities of her controversial private email system.Not only do these emails add to the impression that she was reckless in handling official or classified information, Clintoncould face obstruction of justice charges if deemed to have tried to conceal these messages.
The case closes around her. Already the man who set up the server has refused to answer questions under oath for fear of incriminating himself. In America, an attorney cannot advise his client to make this plea unless pursuant to a reasonable fear of being held liable for a crime. This move was prompted by more than an abundance of caution. It was sparked by a legitimate apprehension. The man has since been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.
Rarely does the Justice Department navigate the complex process of asking a federal court to grant immunity without an indictment appearing on the other end. That the immunity has been granted and subpoenas issued for testimony and documentsalso indicates a grand jury may already have been impaneled.
Besides pleading the 5th amendment against self- incrimination, the only defense now available to Clinton is to plead imbecility. Her best defense is that she did not understand what all this meant.That the jargon was too complicated for her and that she was intellectually unable to recognize highly classified material for what it was intrinsically; it had to have been marked as such by another person. Here she puts herself in a bind.
The foundation of her campaign has been her vaunted competency. Apart from Obama risking himself by covering her, Clinton’s best hope is to claim she was too stupid to have intentionally meant any wrongdoing. She wants us to believe she was so daft that she should not be blamed for violating the minimal technical and legal constraints of her mission as secretary of state. She gladly assumed the job as the nation’s top diplomat but now claims she should be held to a level of knowledge equivalent to that of the janitors who sweeps the State Department floors.
Then she has the temerity to suggest that this deep incompetence should not only be forgiven but it should be rewarded by allowing her to ascend to the presidency. Here, Clinton executes the most sublime flip flop. An ordinary flip flop is when a person says ‘’yes’’ on Monday then ‘’no’’ Tuesday. Here, Clinton adds to it come Wednesday by saying that ‘’all is well’’ because, in her special universe, “yes” can be “no” and “no’’ can be ‘’yes.’’
That she is now musters such a defense is a jarring insult to the public’s intelligence. The worst of it is not the insult itself but the mindset that concocts such a twist. One must hold a very unhealthy disregard for the general public to stake such a claim. Of such disrespect for public wisdom, democratic good governance cannot be born. Yes, the public may be as dumb as a worn bedspring; but its collective stupidity begets a safer haven for democracy and responsive governance than the brilliance of the genius who lacks self-restraint and who loves herself a bit too much to beartrue compassion for others.
Clinton’s acts placed sensitive aspects of American foreign policy in danger. While I do not agree with much of that policy, what she did has rendered our world more uncertain. It jeopardizes the lives of intelligence personnel, their contacts and potentially undermines operations that costs hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Someoneas reckless as Secretary is not someone you want promoted into the White House unless you seek America injury. But again if she does injury to her own, she is more than likely to exact pain on other nations by both accident and design.
Worst, her transgressions may create a legal and constitutional vortex that will suck in the innocent, forcing them to make hard decisions they would rather not face. If the person involved were not Clinton but a senior professional diplomat, the FBI would have already recommended indictment. (The FBI cannot itself indict. It can only investigate and recommend indictments) Because of the political considerations, the certainty of what the FBI will do reduces to around 75 percent.
The agents working the file reportedly believe they have an air-tight case against her. The day before this article is published, Secretary Clinton would have been questioned by the FBI. This will be the most fateful event in her long political life. Trepidation will accompany her into the interview. She does not know what the FBI may know. A wrong answer under oath may scald her ambitions for good. At this point, she must be wondering if she is fated to come near but never grasping the presidency in her own right. That her FBI meeting falls on the July 4th weekend is symbolic. It shows that she who would consider herself royalty is still subject to the reach and the word of the law. She cannot end this process with an imperial wave of the hand. That no person stands above the law was, in part, what the founding of America was to meant to achieve. It seems that the American experiment in democracy and justice has not yet been totally corrupted by the vast concentration of power and money in a numerically small elite.
FBI Director Comey will have to decide whether to play politics by shelving the likely indictment recommendation of his subordinates or allow justice to take its course. Comey knows he will face rebellion within his agency if he plays politics. Stonewalling the recommendations would mean the rule of law only applies to lesser beings and the not the rich or powerful.
Some of this too is political. Like most law enforcement institutions, the FBI is richly peopled with conservatives with no love for Clinton. She may have given them the rope by which to hang her. They will tenaciously hold to it. Comey knows this and will likely recommend indictment. This will pass the headache to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department.
The first Black woman to hold the position, Lynch owes her career in federal government to her appointment byBill Clinton. She would like nothing better than to let this thing fall into oblivion. She does not want to be the one to end the run of the first female nominee of her own party in such an ignoble manner. Yet, she has been sworn to uphold the law.The case against Clinton may not be infallible but similar cases have been successfully prosecuted to conviction with a lesser quantum of evidence.
Moreover Bill Clinton has put Lynch in the midst of controversy. Last week, he invited himself onto her government airplane where they held a 30 minute talk. News of the private meeting created a firestorm on both left and right. Although both interlocutors claim the email investigation was not discussed, many did not believe the disavowal. Hillary is involved in two investigations and Bill in one; for Lynch to meet either was a breach of ethics for it creates the perception of impropriety. Bill likely thought that meeting Lynch would soften her. However, the public reaction to the meeting has likely hardened Lynch’s resolve to be seen as going where the law and not politics guides her. As such, she publicly stated in a subsequent interview that she would follow the recommendations of the FBI and her Justice Department career prosecutors.
If Lynch somehow stalls on the FBI recommendation, she will encounter a much bigger storm than the tempest brewed by her meeting with the former president. Comey and other senior FBI officials may resign in protest. Justice officials familiar with the case likely may mutiny against her. FBI agents and Justice lawyers working the file will begin to leak their findings, convincing themselves if Clinton can go free for what she did then no one can prosecute them for leaking what Clinton did.
Most of the intelligence community would erupt protesting that failure to prosecute Clinton for such egregious violations makes all the laws and rules meaningless. Lynch would be criticized for killing the rule of law in this area just to save one person’s ambitions. The majority Republican congress would call for Lynch’s head (excuse the pun). She would be under fire to resign or face impeachment. Themelodrama would cast a dark pall over the election and may well extinguish Clinton’s run almost as much as an actual indictment.
If the FBI recommends indictment, President Obama will have to navigate discretely. He dislikes Clinton personally; but as, establishment centrists, they are of the same political family. He owes the Clintons a favor for helping his 2012 reelection when his feet were to the fire. However, if he is seen to be exercising political influence to quash the criminal process, he is liable to obstruction of justice. Moreover, Obama would still face a firestorm from the FBI, Justice and intelligence community. He would appear to cover things up. The case would take on the coloration of Watergate.
Obama has to weigh all of this against the need to satisfy his political debt to the Clintons. Moreover, he has to be careful because several of his emails are part of the Clinton trove. If he allows the case to go forward, it may embarrass him as he is a potential witness if the case goes all the way to trial. If he is perceived as stifling it, he may risk his legacy by ending his presidency in a red-hot scandal that may subject him to obstruction of justice charges.
Too many eyes are watching and too many people know the depths of Clinton’s misdeeds. Obama and Lynch need to swallow hard and blind themselves of the temptation to help her. They serve their names and the nation better by allowing justice to walk unfettered. After all, if Clinton were in their position, she would not risk her neck for either of them.
In all of this, Obama may be playing a most nuanced game. He may loathe a Clinton presidency, believing the Clintons would preclude him from any meaningful role in the party leadership once he leaves the White House. Therefore, he publicly endorses Clinton to redeem his political debt to them. His videoed endorsement of Clinton fulfils the requirement but was a curiously unenthused, less than full-throated statement. However, he will do nothing to forestall what may be coming. He may even encourage it. If so, this would please to no end the two women who are most important to his private and public life. Both Michelle Obama and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett detest the Clintons. They would love nothing more than see her escorted from center stage,replaced by Vice President Biden as the party choice.
If the FBI and Justice Department follow the rule of law, indictments will come against Clinton and her closest aides for the emails. There may be additional charges against the Clintons for corruption. This will toss the presidential race in the air. If these government agencies seek to perform an even more patriotic duty, the indictments shall come prior to the lateJuly Democratic Party convention. This will enable the party to replace the tainted queen with someone who is a truer democrat and a less selfish Democrat. This would also allow Obama to pardon her that she would not have to stand trial which would also obviate him having to serve as a witness during her case.
While the best route, this one is still tough. Obama and his centrist ilk will then have to decide whether to back the progressive Sanders who would be the only mortal standing or insert a candidate such as Biden from their moderate faction at the 13th hour. In doing so, they would be pulling a Clintonesque gambit by snatching from Sanders what otherwise should properly go to him. The party might well fragment in a manner incurable before the November election. If so, this would hand the election to Trump. That would be a disaster.
Obama and the centrists could live with indictments coming immediately after the convention. Under this scenario, the party hierarchy and not the convention delegates would select the replacement. Biden and Secretary of State Kerry would figure prominently. Senator Elizabeth Warren who recently endorsed Clinton would be receive some consideration. With her, the Democratic candidate would still be a woman. Warren also appeals to progressive wing of the part that now feels alienated by Clinton’s quasi-Republican economic positions.
The roadwas cleared for Clinton all the way to the White House. However, the deep pathologies which define her led her to construct obstructions that may prove her political demise. All of this is tragic and so unnecessary. She has engulfed her party, the Obama administration and the nation in cascades of her deceit. She has singlehandedly jeopardized national security in untold ways. Her continued run for the Presidency may bring a legal and constitutional firestorm in its way as hot as Watergate.
If a recommendation for indictment is forthcoming, it will set in motion a series of hard decisions of both political and legal complexities that will have to be made.If not recommendation comes, then she is free to run. She will likely win the White House and from there inflict more of her specialized damage to American democracy and its place in the world. Even then, she may not be free of this blemish.
Should the Republicans return majorities to both Houses of Congress after the election, they will likely move to impeach her. Her presidency will be rocked by scandal from the onset and. With her presidency substantially weakened and under constant existential stress, Clinton would likely prove to be at her most dangerous. Uncertainty clouds how far she may venture in an attempt to hold to power. No sane electorate should want to vote their nation into such a bind.
This is why character is so important in leadership. We have just reviewed how an individual’s pettiness,fueled by sleepless ambition, may have twisted the world’s most powerful government into a Gordian knot. Supreme discretion and judgment will be required to break it.
Good fruit is rare but the fruits of the poisonous tree become swiftly manifold.
Last week’s piece summarized why the Republican Trump was unfit for the presidency and why the Democratic Clinton has disqualified herself because of the serious breaches of national security committed as Secretary of State. In trying to explain the matter of her mishandled emails, I failed to disclose is that Clintonis actually the subject of two distinct but interrelated FBI criminal investigations. She is the subject of a public corruption investigation attempting to ascertain whether she used her office to solicit funds for the Clinton Foundation. This investigation is related to the email story because the initial evidence suggesting abuse of office is derived from the trove of emails on the Clinton private server.
The evidence mounts against her by the week. Clinton publicly claimed this was but a routine “security inquiry.” The FBI director retorted his agency does not perform security inquiries. This is a criminal investigation said he.
Clinton turned over 30,000 emails but thought she destroyed an equal number which she said were personal in nature. To her chagrin, the FBI was able to recoup the mass of the destroyed documentsfrom others sources and is currently vetting those documents. A portion of these have been released in several noncriminal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Refuting her claim, over 100 of these emails are clearly work related. Several of them were written by her and regard the vulnerabilities of her controversial private email system.Not only do these emails add to the impression that she was reckless in handling official or classified information, Clintoncould face obstruction of justice charges if deemed to have tried to conceal these messages.
The case closes around her. Already the man who set up the server has refused to answer questions under oath for fear of incriminating himself. In America, an attorney cannot advise his client to make this plea unless pursuant to a reasonable fear of being held liable for a crime. This move was prompted by more than an abundance of caution. It was sparked by a legitimate apprehension. The man has since been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.
Rarely does the Justice Department navigate the complex process of asking a federal court to grant immunity without an indictment appearing on the other end. That the immunity has been granted and subpoenas issued for testimony and documentsalso indicates a grand jury may already have been impaneled.
Besides pleading the 5th amendment against self- incrimination, the only defense now available to Clinton is to plead imbecility. Her best defense is that she did not understand what all this meant.That the jargon was too complicated for her and that she was intellectually unable to recognize highly classified material for what it was intrinsically; it had to have been marked as such by another person. Here she puts herself in a bind.
The foundation of her campaign has been her vaunted competency. Apart from Obama risking himself by covering her, Clinton’s best hope is to claim she was too stupid to have intentionally meant any wrongdoing. She wants us to believe she was so daft that she should not be blamed for violating the minimal technical and legal constraints of her mission as secretary of state. She gladly assumed the job as the nation’s top diplomat but now claims she should be held to a level of knowledge equivalent to that of the janitors who sweeps the State Department floors.
Then she has the temerity to suggest that this deep incompetence should not only be forgiven but it should be rewarded by allowing her to ascend to the presidency. Here, Clinton executes the most sublime flip flop. An ordinary flip flop is when a person says ‘’yes’’ on Monday then ‘’no’’ Tuesday. Here, Clinton adds to it come Wednesday by saying that ‘’all is well’’ because, in her special universe, “yes” can be “no” and “no’’ can be ‘’yes.’’
That she is now musters such a defense is a jarring insult to the public’s intelligence. The worst of it is not the insult itself but the mindset that concocts such a twist. One must hold a very unhealthy disregard for the general public to stake such a claim. Of such disrespect for public wisdom, democratic good governance cannot be born. Yes, the public may be as dumb as a worn bedspring; but its collective stupidity begets a safer haven for democracy and responsive governance than the brilliance of the genius who lacks self-restraint and who loves herself a bit too much to beartrue compassion for others.
Clinton’s acts placed sensitive aspects of American foreign policy in danger. While I do not agree with much of that policy, what she did has rendered our world more uncertain. It jeopardizes the lives of intelligence personnel, their contacts and potentially undermines operations that costs hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Someoneas reckless as Secretary is not someone you want promoted into the White House unless you seek America injury. But again if she does injury to her own, she is more than likely to exact pain on other nations by both accident and design.
Worst, her transgressions may create a legal and constitutional vortex that will suck in the innocent, forcing them to make hard decisions they would rather not face. If the person involved were not Clinton but a senior professional diplomat, the FBI would have already recommended indictment. (The FBI cannot itself indict. It can only investigate and recommend indictments) Because of the political considerations, the certainty of what the FBI will do reduces to around 75 percent.
The agents working the file reportedly believe they have an air-tight case against her. The day before this article is published, Secretary Clinton would have been questioned by the FBI. This will be the most fateful event in her long political life. Trepidation will accompany her into the interview. She does not know what the FBI may know. A wrong answer under oath may scald her ambitions for good. At this point, she must be wondering if she is fated to come near but never grasping the presidency in her own right. That her FBI meeting falls on the July 4th weekend is symbolic. It shows that she who would consider herself royalty is still subject to the reach and the word of the law. She cannot end this process with an imperial wave of the hand. That no person stands above the law was, in part, what the founding of America was to meant to achieve. It seems that the American experiment in democracy and justice has not yet been totally corrupted by the vast concentration of power and money in a numerically small elite.
FBI Director Comey will have to decide whether to play politics by shelving the likely indictment recommendation of his subordinates or allow justice to take its course. Comey knows he will face rebellion within his agency if he plays politics. Stonewalling the recommendations would mean the rule of law only applies to lesser beings and the not the rich or powerful.
Some of this too is political. Like most law enforcement institutions, the FBI is richly peopled with conservatives with no love for Clinton. She may have given them the rope by which to hang her. They will tenaciously hold to it. Comey knows this and will likely recommend indictment. This will pass the headache to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department.
The first Black woman to hold the position, Lynch owes her career in federal government to her appointment byBill Clinton. She would like nothing better than to let this thing fall into oblivion. She does not want to be the one to end the run of the first female nominee of her own party in such an ignoble manner. Yet, she has been sworn to uphold the law.The case against Clinton may not be infallible but similar cases have been successfully prosecuted to conviction with a lesser quantum of evidence.
Moreover Bill Clinton has put Lynch in the midst of controversy. Last week, he invited himself onto her government airplane where they held a 30 minute talk. News of the private meeting created a firestorm on both left and right. Although both interlocutors claim the email investigation was not discussed, many did not believe the disavowal. Hillary is involved in two investigations and Bill in one; for Lynch to meet either was a breach of ethics for it creates the perception of impropriety. Bill likely thought that meeting Lynch would soften her. However, the public reaction to the meeting has likely hardened Lynch’s resolve to be seen as going where the law and not politics guides her. As such, she publicly stated in a subsequent interview that she would follow the recommendations of the FBI and her Justice Department career prosecutors.
If Lynch somehow stalls on the FBI recommendation, she will encounter a much bigger storm than the tempest brewed by her meeting with the former president. Comey and other senior FBI officials may resign in protest. Justice officials familiar with the case likely may mutiny against her. FBI agents and Justice lawyers working the file will begin to leak their findings, convincing themselves if Clinton can go free for what she did then no one can prosecute them for leaking what Clinton did.
Most of the intelligence community would erupt protesting that failure to prosecute Clinton for such egregious violations makes all the laws and rules meaningless. Lynch would be criticized for killing the rule of law in this area just to save one person’s ambitions. The majority Republican congress would call for Lynch’s head (excuse the pun). She would be under fire to resign or face impeachment. Themelodrama would cast a dark pall over the election and may well extinguish Clinton’s run almost as much as an actual indictment.
If the FBI recommends indictment, President Obama will have to navigate discretely. He dislikes Clinton personally; but as, establishment centrists, they are of the same political family. He owes the Clintons a favor for helping his 2012 reelection when his feet were to the fire. However, if he is seen to be exercising political influence to quash the criminal process, he is liable to obstruction of justice. Moreover, Obama would still face a firestorm from the FBI, Justice and intelligence community. He would appear to cover things up. The case would take on the coloration of Watergate.
Obama has to weigh all of this against the need to satisfy his political debt to the Clintons. Moreover, he has to be careful because several of his emails are part of the Clinton trove. If he allows the case to go forward, it may embarrass him as he is a potential witness if the case goes all the way to trial. If he is perceived as stifling it, he may risk his legacy by ending his presidency in a red-hot scandal that may subject him to obstruction of justice charges.
Too many eyes are watching and too many people know the depths of Clinton’s misdeeds. Obama and Lynch need to swallow hard and blind themselves of the temptation to help her. They serve their names and the nation better by allowing justice to walk unfettered. After all, if Clinton were in their position, she would not risk her neck for either of them.
In all of this, Obama may be playing a most nuanced game. He may loathe a Clinton presidency, believing the Clintons would preclude him from any meaningful role in the party leadership once he leaves the White House. Therefore, he publicly endorses Clinton to redeem his political debt to them. His videoed endorsement of Clinton fulfils the requirement but was a curiously unenthused, less than full-throated statement. However, he will do nothing to forestall what may be coming. He may even encourage it. If so, this would please to no end the two women who are most important to his private and public life. Both Michelle Obama and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett detest the Clintons. They would love nothing more than see her escorted from center stage,replaced by Vice President Biden as the party choice.
If the FBI and Justice Department follow the rule of law, indictments will come against Clinton and her closest aides for the emails. There may be additional charges against the Clintons for corruption. This will toss the presidential race in the air. If these government agencies seek to perform an even more patriotic duty, the indictments shall come prior to the lateJuly Democratic Party convention. This will enable the party to replace the tainted queen with someone who is a truer democrat and a less selfish Democrat. This would also allow Obama to pardon her that she would not have to stand trial which would also obviate him having to serve as a witness during her case.
While the best route, this one is still tough. Obama and his centrist ilk will then have to decide whether to back the progressive Sanders who would be the only mortal standing or insert a candidate such as Biden from their moderate faction at the 13th hour. In doing so, they would be pulling a Clintonesque gambit by snatching from Sanders what otherwise should properly go to him. The party might well fragment in a manner incurable before the November election. If so, this would hand the election to Trump. That would be a disaster.
Obama and the centrists could live with indictments coming immediately after the convention. Under this scenario, the party hierarchy and not the convention delegates would select the replacement. Biden and Secretary of State Kerry would figure prominently. Senator Elizabeth Warren who recently endorsed Clinton would be receive some consideration. With her, the Democratic candidate would still be a woman. Warren also appeals to progressive wing of the part that now feels alienated by Clinton’s quasi-Republican economic positions.
The roadwas cleared for Clinton all the way to the White House. However, the deep pathologies which define her led her to construct obstructions that may prove her political demise. All of this is tragic and so unnecessary. She has engulfed her party, the Obama administration and the nation in cascades of her deceit. She has singlehandedly jeopardized national security in untold ways. Her continued run for the Presidency may bring a legal and constitutional firestorm in its way as hot as Watergate.
If a recommendation for indictment is forthcoming, it will set in motion a series of hard decisions of both political and legal complexities that will have to be made.If not recommendation comes, then she is free to run. She will likely win the White House and from there inflict more of her specialized damage to American democracy and its place in the world. Even then, she may not be free of this blemish.
Should the Republicans return majorities to both Houses of Congress after the election, they will likely move to impeach her. Her presidency will be rocked by scandal from the onset and. With her presidency substantially weakened and under constant existential stress, Clinton would likely prove to be at her most dangerous. Uncertainty clouds how far she may venture in an attempt to hold to power. No sane electorate should want to vote their nation into such a bind.
This is why character is so important in leadership. We have just reviewed how an individual’s pettiness,fueled by sleepless ambition, may have twisted the world’s most powerful government into a Gordian knot. Supreme discretion and judgment will be required to break it.
Good fruit is rare but the fruits of the poisonous tree become swiftly manifold.
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