Did the State Department audit which announced Clinton broke rules derail her presidential candidacy? For many conservatives, the 78-page audit may well be the smoking gun which will unravel Hillary’s once inevitable campaign coronation. The real question is whether Clinton will be knocked out of the presidential battle when the FBI delivers its investigation.
The narrative that the former Secretary of State has stuck with all through the campaign has always at best seemed seemingly unexplainable. But according to Clinton legal principles, it was not only perfectly legal because the rules of law do not apply. Remember how former President Bill Clinton managed to skirt the law when interviewed about his sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky? He uttered those now infamous words: It “depends upon what the definition if is, is.”
This artful turn of the legal phrase was enough to calm down his Democrat supporters, but not the House of Representatives which did impeach him. He was able to politically wiggle his way out of a senate impeachment conviction and earned the phrase being “politically bulletproof.”
For Hillary, that political vest that her husband wore has not worked for her, and as much as she has tried to put the email server political albatross behind her, it has stuck to her like hot tar. Every explanation that she has given since the House, FBI and State Department Inspector General investigation into her email server and security inquiries into her emails has fallen short.
The nail in her political coffin may well have been created by her own reluctance to be open and honest the inspector general from her own department. Instead she seemingly decided to roll the political dice and refuse to be interviewed by him. She also ordered her staff to follow her lead and they also decided to not offer up any testimony to his inquiry.
Clinton openly lied when she said she had been in total compliance with State Department rules concerning national security oversight use of emails. According to Fox News, the report disputes her contention and found,
Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records … At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.
In addition, the State Department report indicated that its investigators found “no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server.” This directly conflicts with her statements that she had received approval to use her personal server to conduct official State Department business.
Perpetual lying in the face of overwhelming evidence does not seem to matter to Hillary Clinton. Because as long as there was no official public accounting of her misfeasance, her mainstream media protector would simply not report it, even when her utterances would have sunk a Republican presidential candidacy. Kind of wish President Ronald Reagan were still around to say, “There she goes again.”
Perhaps, Clinton knew something that the American public and she felt the government investigators did not know. She could destroy the emails that she felt would incriminate her and claim ignorance. But that did not work so well for President Nixon and the missing 18 minutes of the White House taping system. The tens of thousands of emails that she had erased may have been recovered by FBI investigators who reportedly are using nearly 150 agents to investigate Clinton.
Then of course there is the utter hypocrisy of Clinton who stated that she had received approval to use her private server and emails to conduct official duties as Secretary of State. But somehow she could fire an ambassador for engaging in the same conduct of using private emails to conduct official government business. Donald Trump would be saying, “Crooked Hillary,” right about now.
Now comes the political and legal reckoning that she cannot avoid and it may prove terminal to her candidacy. The extensive and very detailed report reads like a collection of damning charges that indicts both her ability to protect national security as well as effectiveness as a department leader. It points to the State Department being, “slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications.”
But it does not stop there. The charges conclude that Clinton received failing marks on some very serious security failures including that at one point, according to Fox News, that there were “numerous revelations, including that her server was at one point “attacked.”
Unfortunately for Clinton all of her claims of right wing conspiracies and Republican motivated attacks will not work this time. The hurricane is gaining force and her lies are being called out by the State Department inspector general who is an Obama administration appointee. Clinton lied when she said she received approval to place the nation’s national security at risk by using her private server. Clinton never sought approval to use her personal account for government work, and according to the report, she would never had received approval.
The wall of lies and denials is falling down on her presidential candidacy and maybe Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was smart to say in the race to the Democrat nomination. If Clinton is sent to the showers based upon the unraveling of her campaign and an escalation of public charges, it will be Sanders taking to the stage to accept the Democrat nomination.
Image: photo credit: Hillary Clinton via photopin (license); Gage Skidmore
