It Wasn’t Comey’s Decision to Exonerate Hillary – It Was Obama’s
by Andrew C. McCarthy
September 2, 2017 12:33 PM
@AndrewCMcCarthy
The thing to understand, what has always been the most important thing
to understand, is that Jim Comey was out in front, but he was not
calling the shots.
On the right, the commentariat is in full-throttle outrage over the
revelation that former FBI Director Comey began drafting his statement
exonerating Hillary Clinton in April 2016 – more than two months before
he delivered the statement at his now famous July 5 press conference.
The news appears in a letter written to new FBI Director Christopher
Wray by two senior Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, Chairman
Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham. Pundits and the Trump
administration are shrieking because this indicates the decision to give
the Democrats’ nominee a pass was clearly made long before the
investigation was over, and even long before key witnesses, including
Clinton herself, were interviewed.
It shows, they cry, that the fix was in!
News Flash: This is not news.
Let’s think about what else was going on in April 2016. I’ve written
about it a number of times over the last year-plus, such as in a column a
few months back:
On April 10, 2016, President Obama publicly stated that Hillary
Clinton had shown “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server to
handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended
to endanger national security (which is not an element of the [criminal
statutes relevant to her e-mail scandal]). The president acknowledged
that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s
server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, its
importance had been vastly overstated.
This is precisely the reasoning that Comey relied on in ultimately
absolving Clinton, as I recounted in the same column:
On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey publicly stated that
Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using a private email server to
handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not
intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the
relevant criminal statute). The director acknowledged that classified
information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he
suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, it was just a small
percentage of the emails involved.
Obama’s April statements are the significant ones. They told us how this
was going to go. The rest is just details.
In his April 10 comments, Obama made the obvious explicit: He did not
want the certain Democratic nominee, the candidate he was backing to
succeed him, to be indicted. Conveniently, his remarks (inevitably
echoed by Comey) did not mention that an intent to endanger national
security was not an element of the criminal offenses Clinton was
suspected of committing – in classic Obama fashion, he was urging her
innocence of a strawman crime while dodging any discussion of the crimes
she had actually committed.
As we also now know – but as Obama knew at the time – the president
himself had communicated with Clinton over her non-secure, private
communications system, using an alias. The Obama administration refused
to disclose these several e-mail exchanges because they undoubtedly
involve classified conversations between the president and his secretary
of state. It would not have been possible to prosecute Mrs. Clinton for
mishandling classified information without its being clear that
President Obama had engaged in the same conduct. The administration was
never, ever going to allow that to happen.
What else was going on in May 2016, while Comey was drafting his
findings (even though several of the things he would purportedly “base”
them on hadn’t actually happened yet)? Well, as I explained in real time
(in a column entitled “Clinton E-mails: Is the Fix In?”), the Obama
Justice Department was leaking to the Washington Post that Clinton
probably would not be charged – and that her top aide, Cheryl Mills, was
considered a cooperating witness rather than a coconspirator.
Why? Well, I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but it turns out the
Obama Justice Department had fully adopted the theory of the case
announced by President Obama in April. The Post explained that,
according to its sources inside the investigation, there was “scant
evidence tying Clinton to criminal wrongdoing” because there was “scant
evidence that Clinton had malicious intent in [the] handling of e-mails”
(emphasis added). Like Obama, the Post and its sources neglected to
mention that Mrs. Clinton’s felonies did not require proof of “malicious
intent” or any purpose to harm the United States – just that she
willfully transmitted classified information, was grossly negligent in
handling it, and withheld or destroyed government records.
As I recounted in the same May 2016 column, the Obama Justice Department
was simultaneously barring the FBI from asking Mills questions that
went to the heart of the e-mails investigation – questions about the
process by which Clinton and her underlings decided which of her 60,000
e-mails to surrender to the State Department, and which would be
withheld (it ended up being about 33,000) as purportedly “private” (a
goodly percentage were not).
This was the start of a series of Justice Department shenanigans we
would come to learn about: Cutting off key areas of inquiry; cutting
inexplicable immunity deals; declining to use the grand jury to compel
evidence; agreeing to limit searches of computers (in order to miss key
time-frames when obstruction occurred); agreeing to destroy physical
evidence (laptop computers); failing to charge and squeeze witnesses who
made patently false statements; allowing subjects of the investigation
to act as lawyers for other subjects of the investigation (in order to
promote the charade that some evidence was off-limits due to the
attorney-client privilege); and so on. There is a way – a notoriously
aggressive way – that the Justice Department and FBI go about their
business when they are trying to make a case. Here, they were trying to
unmake a case.
Knowing all these things, as we now do and have for a year, I’m baffled
by complaints that Comey allegedly made “his” decision not to charge
Clinton before key witnesses were interviewed. The main issue is not
that witnesses hadn’t been questioned; it is that by April 2016,
restraints were already in place to ensure that witness interviews would
be fruitless, and that any incriminating information they accidentally
turned up would be ignored or buried.
The decision not to indict Hillary Clinton was not made by then-FBI
Director Comey. It was made by President Obama and his Justice
Department – Comey’s superiors. If you want to say Comey went along for
the ride rather than bucking the tide (as he concedes doing when Lynch
directed him to call the Clinton probe a “matter,” not an
“investigation”), that’s fair. But the fact that Comey already knew in
April what he would say in July has long been perfectly obvious. The
Obama administration was going to follow its leader. What Comey
ultimately stated was just a repeat of what Obama was openly saying in
April, and what Obama’s Justice Department was leaking to the press in
May.
Bottom line: In April, President Obama and his Justice Department
adopted a Hillary Clinton defense strategy of concocting a crime no one
was claiming Clinton had committed: to wit, transmitting classified
information with an intent to harm the United States. With
media-Democrat complex help, they peddled the narrative that she could
not be convicted absent this “malicious intent,” in a desperate effort
to make the publicly known evidence seem weak. Meanwhile, they quietly
hamstrung FBI case investigators in order to frustrate the
evidence-gathering process. When damning proof nevertheless mounted, the
Obama administration dismissed the whole debacle by rewriting the
statute (to impose an imaginary intent standard) and by offering absurd
rationalizations for not applying the statute as written.
That plan was in place and already being implemented when Director Comey
began drafting the “findings” he would announce months later. But it
was not Comey’s plan. It was Obama’s plan.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/451053/not-comeys-decision-exonerate-hillary-obamas-decision
to understand, is that Jim Comey was out in front, but he was not
calling the shots.
On the right, the commentariat is in full-throttle outrage over the
revelation that former FBI Director Comey began drafting his statement
exonerating Hillary Clinton in April 2016 – more than two months before
he delivered the statement at his now famous July 5 press conference.
The news appears in a letter written to new FBI Director Christopher
Wray by two senior Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, Chairman
Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham. Pundits and the Trump
administration are shrieking because this indicates the decision to give
the Democrats’ nominee a pass was clearly made long before the
investigation was over, and even long before key witnesses, including
Clinton herself, were interviewed.
It shows, they cry, that the fix was in!
News Flash: This is not news.
Let’s think about what else was going on in April 2016. I’ve written
about it a number of times over the last year-plus, such as in a column a
few months back:
On April 10, 2016, President Obama publicly stated that Hillary
Clinton had shown “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server to
handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended
to endanger national security (which is not an element of the [criminal
statutes relevant to her e-mail scandal]). The president acknowledged
that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s
server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, its
importance had been vastly overstated.
This is precisely the reasoning that Comey relied on in ultimately
absolving Clinton, as I recounted in the same column:
On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey publicly stated that
Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using a private email server to
handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not
intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the
relevant criminal statute). The director acknowledged that classified
information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he
suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, it was just a small
percentage of the emails involved.
Obama’s April statements are the significant ones. They told us how this
was going to go. The rest is just details.
In his April 10 comments, Obama made the obvious explicit: He did not
want the certain Democratic nominee, the candidate he was backing to
succeed him, to be indicted. Conveniently, his remarks (inevitably
echoed by Comey) did not mention that an intent to endanger national
security was not an element of the criminal offenses Clinton was
suspected of committing – in classic Obama fashion, he was urging her
innocence of a strawman crime while dodging any discussion of the crimes
she had actually committed.
As we also now know – but as Obama knew at the time – the president
himself had communicated with Clinton over her non-secure, private
communications system, using an alias. The Obama administration refused
to disclose these several e-mail exchanges because they undoubtedly
involve classified conversations between the president and his secretary
of state. It would not have been possible to prosecute Mrs. Clinton for
mishandling classified information without its being clear that
President Obama had engaged in the same conduct. The administration was
never, ever going to allow that to happen.
What else was going on in May 2016, while Comey was drafting his
findings (even though several of the things he would purportedly “base”
them on hadn’t actually happened yet)? Well, as I explained in real time
(in a column entitled “Clinton E-mails: Is the Fix In?”), the Obama
Justice Department was leaking to the Washington Post that Clinton
probably would not be charged – and that her top aide, Cheryl Mills, was
considered a cooperating witness rather than a coconspirator.
Why? Well, I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but it turns out the
Obama Justice Department had fully adopted the theory of the case
announced by President Obama in April. The Post explained that,
according to its sources inside the investigation, there was “scant
evidence tying Clinton to criminal wrongdoing” because there was “scant
evidence that Clinton had malicious intent in [the] handling of e-mails”
(emphasis added). Like Obama, the Post and its sources neglected to
mention that Mrs. Clinton’s felonies did not require proof of “malicious
intent” or any purpose to harm the United States – just that she
willfully transmitted classified information, was grossly negligent in
handling it, and withheld or destroyed government records.
As I recounted in the same May 2016 column, the Obama Justice Department
was simultaneously barring the FBI from asking Mills questions that
went to the heart of the e-mails investigation – questions about the
process by which Clinton and her underlings decided which of her 60,000
e-mails to surrender to the State Department, and which would be
withheld (it ended up being about 33,000) as purportedly “private” (a
goodly percentage were not).
This was the start of a series of Justice Department shenanigans we
would come to learn about: Cutting off key areas of inquiry; cutting
inexplicable immunity deals; declining to use the grand jury to compel
evidence; agreeing to limit searches of computers (in order to miss key
time-frames when obstruction occurred); agreeing to destroy physical
evidence (laptop computers); failing to charge and squeeze witnesses who
made patently false statements; allowing subjects of the investigation
to act as lawyers for other subjects of the investigation (in order to
promote the charade that some evidence was off-limits due to the
attorney-client privilege); and so on. There is a way – a notoriously
aggressive way – that the Justice Department and FBI go about their
business when they are trying to make a case. Here, they were trying to
unmake a case.
Knowing all these things, as we now do and have for a year, I’m baffled
by complaints that Comey allegedly made “his” decision not to charge
Clinton before key witnesses were interviewed. The main issue is not
that witnesses hadn’t been questioned; it is that by April 2016,
restraints were already in place to ensure that witness interviews would
be fruitless, and that any incriminating information they accidentally
turned up would be ignored or buried.
The decision not to indict Hillary Clinton was not made by then-FBI
Director Comey. It was made by President Obama and his Justice
Department – Comey’s superiors. If you want to say Comey went along for
the ride rather than bucking the tide (as he concedes doing when Lynch
directed him to call the Clinton probe a “matter,” not an
“investigation”), that’s fair. But the fact that Comey already knew in
April what he would say in July has long been perfectly obvious. The
Obama administration was going to follow its leader. What Comey
ultimately stated was just a repeat of what Obama was openly saying in
April, and what Obama’s Justice Department was leaking to the press in
May.
Bottom line: In April, President Obama and his Justice Department
adopted a Hillary Clinton defense strategy of concocting a crime no one
was claiming Clinton had committed: to wit, transmitting classified
information with an intent to harm the United States. With
media-Democrat complex help, they peddled the narrative that she could
not be convicted absent this “malicious intent,” in a desperate effort
to make the publicly known evidence seem weak. Meanwhile, they quietly
hamstrung FBI case investigators in order to frustrate the
evidence-gathering process. When damning proof nevertheless mounted, the
Obama administration dismissed the whole debacle by rewriting the
statute (to impose an imaginary intent standard) and by offering absurd
rationalizations for not applying the statute as written.
That plan was in place and already being implemented when Director Comey
began drafting the “findings” he would announce months later. But it
was not Comey’s plan. It was Obama’s plan.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/451053/not-comeys-decision-exonerate-hillary-obamas-decision
