The Good Old Days

Back in the good old days of Richard Nixon and Watergate, you know, before the Department of Justice was compromised by hyper-partisan politics, before the FBI became a political tool wielded by the president rather than the government law enforcement arm, before members of the sitting president's political party supported him mindlessly no matter how bad his decisions were or how corrupt his actions became, citizens of this country could expect that even the President and certainly high government officials were not above the law.

No more.

Michael Goodwin writes:

Oh, for the good old days of Watergate and of public servants like Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus. We should be so lucky now.

Instead, we have a sitting president, Barack Obama, who presided over a corrupt Justice Department and the FBI. And instead of public servants of principle, we have a gaggle of quislings, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who put partisanship and their careers ahead of duty.

Rather than ending a national nightmare, a transfer of power from Obama to Clinton would start a new crisis of confidence. Consider the threshold question of whether the Justice Department could ever be trusted to prosecute anyone in public office.

If Clinton is guilty of only “mistakes” and “bad judgment” in setting up a private server, sending and receiving national secrets and destroying thousands of government e-mails, on what fair basis can any public official be held accountable?

Is the bar for prosecution raised or lowered depending on political connections?

But maybe all of this is just a political persecution—an evil right wing conspiracy trying to denigrate Hillary Clinton? I'm afraid not.

Goodwin continues:

Thanks to The Wall Street Journal, we also know the FBI ignored outrageous conflicts of interest among its own leadership while supposedly investigating Clinton and one of her top associates, Virginias Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The paper reported that the head of the FBI’s Washington office met with McAuliffe as the official’s wife was running as a Democrat for the Virginia legislature, and that McAuliffe funneled nearly $700,000 to her campaign.

That aide, Andrew McCabe, went on to oversee the shoddy Clinton probe, and is now No. 2 in the FBI, second only to Director James Comey. And we’re supposed to believe all this is kosher?

Wait, there’s more. Remember that the FBI failed even to investigate the pay-to-play patterns with donors to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was secretary of state. Several reported transactions look like straight-up bribery, yet there is no sign a single person in the Justice Department suggested an inquiry.

From start to finish, it is obvious that the FBI gave Clinton special treatment. The failure to impanel a grand jury and issue subpoenas, the granting of five immunity deals to her aides, and the agreement to destroy potential evidence all lead to the conclusion that Comey bent the rules to make sure Clinton was cleared.

This is all convoluted and exceedingly complex. As I've stated a number of times in recent weeks, Clinton uses complexity and obtuse dealings and connections as a shield against liability for unethical and illegal activity.

But here's the thing. At some level, the public sees through the complexity and comes away with the uneasy feeling that Hillary Clinton is a criminal. They're not wrong.