On Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey announced that Hillary Clinton would not be indicted on the basis of her use of an unsecure, private server, instead of a protected Government server, nor because on that server she sent and received classified material including documents marked as classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Programs level.
Comey was fairly candid about how bad her actions were, and castigated the State Department under John Kerry -- they almost immediately had to try to defend themselves -- for their handling of her emails then and now. He used words for Hillary herself like "extremely careless in ... handling sensitive and classified information."
He did not say anything I could find about that part of the investigation relating to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary selling influence to foreign governments by accepting donations to the Clinton Foundation and by her "husband" Bill making heavily-paid speeches. This influence peddling resulted, among other things, in a lot of American uranium ending up in Russia. But Hillary got a lot of money out of it, so all is well in the eyes of her sycophants and toadies. That investigation is presumably still ongoing. Anyone?
Donald Trump and others are screaming and have been for the past 24 hours, that the "fix was in" and that Hillary is getting away with murder, or something close to it. The loudest voices are protesting that anyone not named "Clinton", even by "marriage", would have been indicted. The law (Section 793(f) of the Federal Code) does not require "intent' to prosecute, just negligence.
But ... but ... but ... I have a different take. Please bear with me.
You may be familiar with the 1964 Anthony Quinn movie "The Visit." Based on an old German play, it is the story of a man named Serge (played by Quinn) in a small German town who years before had gotten a young woman named Carla pregnant. The woman left the town in disgrace. Now she returns wealthy and powerful, but the town has gone into terrible decay. Carla promises to restore the town via her wealth -- but only when Serge is dead.
The town rejects her blood money -- at first -- but ultimately succumbs and makes up phony capital charges against Serge. He is convicted and just about to be executed, when Carla halts the execution and says that she will donate the money regardless. "I simply", she tells the town, "want him to live in a town that would have killed him on fake charges just for the money."
I think Hillary Clinton is now Serge Miller after the cancelled execution.
The FBI found her to have been hugely careless and irresponsible with classified material. Comey was highly critical and, as we should properly infer from his direct statements, the only reason she was not indicted for the email issue is that they could not identify intent to leak or expose the classified material. That interpretation is pretty strange (and does not reflect the actual law), but what he did accuse her of is bad enough, really bad.
And that's my point. She has lost her victimhood, since she didn't get indicted, at least not yet (we don't know what is going on relative to the investigation of the Foundation). She can't play her victim card, but she can't celebrate, just as Serge Miller got his life back but would have to live it among people who sold him out -- a hollow victory.
She is in a very bad place right now, and for her campaign it might be the worst thing -- not being indicted but essentially having the FBI declare her to have been careless with our nation's secrets. So she can't stand up there and say that she "won" or celebrate any kind of victory because the FBI decided she did some terrible things -- they just decided not to indict her.
Now, the Republicans and Donald Trump have much the upper hand. They get to say, factually, that Hillary was irresponsible with highly-classified material and demonstrated that her personal desires and convenience were more important than national security. And now they can make the case that the system is rigged -- exactly what Trump has been saying all along.
You can rightly say that this is the best of both worlds for the Republicans in this election cycle. Hillary is branded with her recklessness as determined by the FBI. She does not get a day in court to vindicate herself, because the evidence is now out there but with no case to be prosecuted. She can't plead being a victim, because she avoided prosecution. The stain of her deeds is there forever.
At 69 years old, everyone knows she won't change. She was self-centered and careless yesterday and she would be tomorrow as (God forbid) president. In fact, if she has her security clearance revoked, even for just a year, as the law actually demands, she couldn't even function as president on national security matters because she couldn't be briefed.
I do hope that in the Trump campaign they are thinking this through and planning the right messaging of what happened on Tuesday -- in a scripted speech. If they can make the combined case of her incompetence, her corruption and her taking advantage of a system rigged for the Clintons, they can win. The campaign needs to take a deep breath and get their message right -- and keep repeating it.
We voters aren't stupid. We'll hear you.
Note -- the original stage play, "The Visit of the Old Lady" by the late Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, ends differently from the movie -- the male character dies in the end and the town gets its money from the wealthy woman. I had read it (in German) back in a college German class at M.I.T. and was quite familiar with it when by chance I saw the movie and immediately recognized its source. I actually thought that the movie ended the story even better than the original play, and have seen the analogy of Miller's fate in multiple situations over the years. Hillary's Pyrrhic victory is not the first.
Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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