A Smash Mouth Defense

In the coming months, based on facts already publicly known, it's highly likely that the FBI will produce sufficient evidence to justify a criminal indictment of Hillary Clinton. This will be passed on the the Obama's Justice Department. After lengthy evaluation, probably taking us past the presidential election, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, an Obama appointee, will conclude that no indictment is warranted ... OR ... the enmity that characterizes the relationship between Clinton and Obama will bubble to the surface, and the DoJ will decide to indict before the election. In either case, all hell will break out. Get out the popcorn!

As the investigation continues, Hillary and her minions will apply a proven strategy that the Clintons have used when they have been cornered. The Wall Street Journal describes their approach:

...the familiar Clinton method is to depict anyone looking into their dealings as partisan maniacs. In the 1990s they converted the respected center-right jurist Kenneth Starr into Torquemada, and the first lady herself smeared the special counsel. “We get a politically motivated prosecutor who is allied with the right-wing opponents of my husband,” she claimed on the “Today” show in 1998, adding that Mr. Starr was “using the criminal justice system to try to achieve political ends in this country” and “very frankly, to undo the results of two elections.”

The airstrike on Mr. Seide [counselor and acting senior adviser to State Department Inspector General Steve Linick] is also notable because the Clinton campaign claims the conspiracy includes the intelligence community’s Inspector General Charles McCullough, who confirmed that her emails contained hundreds with classified material. Yet Mrs. Clinton dismissed the controversy in an interview with NPR last week as little more than “a continuation of an interagency dispute that has been going on now for some months” about what information ought to be secret. Now Foggy Bottom is apparently out to get her too.

The Democratic frontrunner apologized in September for her email infidelities, but at CNN’s town hall this week she seemed to retract it: “I’m not willing to say it was an error in judgment because what—nothing that I did was wrong. It was not in any way prohibited.”

This legalistic evasion and the return of smash-mouth defense likely means the Clintons are more anxious about the email investigation than they care to admit. It also may be intended as a warning to FBI Director James Comey that he too will get the Ken Starr treatment if the bureau recommends a criminal prosecution for her willful disregard of government procedures in handling America’s national security secrets.

The reason that the Clinton camp is "anxious," I suspect, is because the FBI investigation may be looking at more than just the criminal disregard for treatment of top-secret information. In going through recovered emails that Clinton purposely erased, the FBI may have found evidence of quid pro quo dealings with foreign powers and/or international corporations while she was Secretary of State. I would guess that he cost for such favors was large 'donations' (well hidden with cutout entities) to the Clinton Global Initiative. If such evidence is leaked, Hillary will have to burn Washington down to escape the consequences.


UPDATE:
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I had dinner last night with a long time friend—a life-long democrat and supporter of Hillary Clinton. Knowing that I lean to the right politically, she smiled and asked who I supported, and what I thought of Hillary. I told her (in a nice way) that I firmly believed that Hillary was both dishonest and corrupt—a bad combination of traits for a president.

"Because of the emails?" she asked. "Because that was just a misunderstanding. Besides, no one really cares. It's just partisan politics, that's all."

This seems to be the prevailed meme among Hillary supporters—a "misunderstanding," nothing purposeful, no one cares, and besides, it just the GOP going after her.

John Schindler comments on all of this:

Why Ms. Clinton and her staff refused to use State Department email for official business is an open and important question. Suspicion inevitably falls on widespread allegations of pay-for-play, a corrupt scheme whereby foreign entities gave cash to the Clinton Global Initiative in exchange for Ms. Clinton’s favors at Foggy Bottom. The FBI is investigating this matter in connection with EmailGate.

Regardless of whether Ms. Clinton was engaged in political corruption, she unquestionably cast aside security as Secretary of State. She can’t quite keep her story straight on why that was, and she is at pains to deny that there is any real issue here at all, suggesting that it’s just another right-wing propaganda ploy. Ms. Clinton is veering hazardously close to her infamous “What difference at this point does it make?” claim, which she touted about the 2012 Benghazi attack.

Yet, as any seasoned intelligence professional will tell you, it matters a great deal—just not in ways visible to the American public. The communications of America’s top diplomat are closely monitored by dozens of foreign spy services, and anything sent out unencrypted, as Ms. Clinton’s email was, should be assumed to be read by numerous countries, including some who are not our friends ...

Government officials and military officers have been indicted and many have gone to jail for far lessor violations of national security. One has to wonder whether Clinton will be held to the same standard.