It is quite disheartening to see Americans celebrating in light of the FBI's investigation findings of Hillary Clinton's email/private server scandal as if it were some type of exoneration of our new overlord. To those celebrating: Congratulations, our future president wasn't indicted on criminal charges. What a high bar we have set for our future Commander-in-Chief.
Let me also say that after hearing FBI Director James Comey speak on the subject and reviewing the new information, I do not necessarily disagree with the FBI's decision to not recommend a criminal indictment against Hillary Clinton to the Department of Justice. In a vacuum that exists outside of the current Washington D.C. culture of extraordinary secrecy that has been particularly punitive toward those who have mishandled classified information, I do not think that a prosecution would believe Hillary Clinton was intentionally behaving in a criminal manner.
With that said, however, it is now abundantly clear that Hillary Clinton is a poor candidate to be the United States' next President. As James Comey outlined in his briefing, any reasonable individual would not have behaved like Hillary Clinton did as Secretary of State. What she did was grossly negligent and irresponsible, and she recklessly placed her own personal convenience and self-interests above national security interests and her governmental duties as Secretary of State.
Even worse, Clinton has repeatedly lied to the American public during this entire process, and we know that with even more certainty in light of the FBI's investigation into this case and the Office of Inspector General State Department audit. She was not granted permission to use private email servers, she did send and receive emails with classified and top secret designations on her private servers, she did delete thousands of work-related and highly sensitive emails, and her private servers were indeed vulnerable to hacking by foreign bodies or outsiders. All of these facts fly directly in the face of the claims she has been making over the past year and a half regarding the situation.
During this entire process, Hillary Clinton has demonstrated that she is exceptionally untrustworthy, and that fact alone makes her a poor candidate to be the United State's next Head of State. She also has been shown to be irresponsible and reckless during her time as Secretary of State, placing her own self-interests above her duty and claiming ignorance of the rules as defense. While her use of a private email server was not explicitly criminal in the eyes of politically appointed members of the FBI or the Executive Branch, it certainly was an exercise of exceedingly poor judgement and a clear effort to circumnavigate potential scrutiny by the Freedom of Information Act and other US government sunshine laws.
Unfortunately for Americans, we face a binary choice for our next president: It is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. As untrustworthy and irresponsible Hillary Clinton has consistently demonstrated to be, she is by far more qualified to occupy the Oval Office than Donald Trump. This truly is an extraordinary Presidential race in all of the worst ways.
Fortunately for Americans, however, our choices of what to do moving forward are not as depressingly binary, and we have a multitude of options to improve the health of our country. One of these choices includes demanding more honesty and integrity from our leadership. I argue that it is our civic duty to hold public servants to high standards. We must not accept dishonesty, corruption, incompetence, and unscrupulousness to become the default setting of our public servants and politicians, unless we want those things to become our new normal. In order to better ensure the well-being of our nation, we must strive to hold our elected officials and leaders to be honest, transparent, and faithful to the American people.
This civic duty does not end after this week's FBI announcement or after this year's presidential race. It does not end after Hillary Clinton is our next President or even the election after that. We must be consistently fastidious and reject this kind of behavior from our government and our leaders, who seem to insist on mocking our intelligence. In order to better ensure a free and healthy state, we must vigilantly demand honesty, transparency, and integrity from our government and public servants.
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Outside of the discussion of demanding more honesty and integrity from our government and leadership, I have 4 other questions that are related to the topic that might also serve as relevant talking points for additional conversation:
1) What do you make of this statement made by James Comey? “To be clear, this is not to suggest that, in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”
2) Why is a politically appointed member and organization of the Executive branch interpreting the law? Furthermore, why are members of the Executive branch speculating about how a “reasonable prosecution” might behave instead of simply presenting the facts and information found during their investigation?
3) What is the real difference between “extreme carelessness” and “gross negligence?” How do one weigh that discussion in the context of 18 US Code § 793(f), a statute that does not require intent?
4) And most importantly, what does the FBI's decision say about the standard of secrecy and the legal preeminence of the rich and powerful in Washington D.C.?
Here are some of my thoughts on that subject:
Secrecy has proven to be the way of life a critical component of the culture in Washington D.C. The Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act of 1917 than all of the prior presidential administrations combined. Whisteblowers and people who have mishandled classified information have faced decades in prison, have had their careers absolutely demolished, or have lost security or administrative clearances. And yet, Hillary Clinton faces zero punishment.
James Comey said it himself: A person who engaged in the same sort of activity under similar circumstances would often face consequences. In this case, it appears the Executive branch of the federal government wanted to give Hillary Clinton a clean bill of health while simultaneously warning other or future government employees that if they behave in a similar fashion, they will be punished.
This is a textbook example of the preeminence of the rich and powerful in America, and the corruption of the US federal government is on full display. One of the few positives that I can see emerging from this decision is that perhaps government employees or future whisteblowers who mishandle classified information under the eyes of the law will be granted more leniency or will at least be held to a similar standard as Hillary Clinton. But all of us know that this will almost certainly not be the case; When it comes to secrecy and the rules in Washington D.C., it matters who you are and who is behind you.