No Immunity for the Taxpayer-Paid

There is a congressional committee hearing going on as I write this, with FBI Director James Comey essentially defending the fact that Cheryl Mills, the lawyer who has defended and represented the Clintons for a long time, was apparently granted some form of immunity from prosecution, and will not be pursued by the FBI for the destruction of government records and, possibly and likely, classified material.

Cheryl Mills was also -- and this is truly sad -- allowed to be present when Hillary Clinton, who was not even put under oath, was asked questions by the FBI in regard to her use of a private email server to conduct official government business.  That appears to be in conjunction with the FBI's actions respecting attorney-client privilege in regard to the events of Hillary's tenure at State.

We've also seen a pretty large number of Clintonistas associated with the State Department in the golden years of Hillary's secretariat also granted immunity.  And now, apparently, no one is to be investigated any longer, at least by the FBI, and the American public is sitting here with no grand jury hearings, no one even slapped on the wrist, no one even called to account, lots of Fifth Amendment pleadings, and plenty of immunity.

And Cheryl Mills walks merrily off, whistling in the wind.

One little problem, though.  And this is the one that has me immensely frustrated.  During Hillary Clinton's tenure at State, the entire tenure there, Cheryl Mills was her chief of staff, meaning that she was a Federal employee, salary paid for by the taxpayer.  By you and by me.

To my way of thinking, the Clintons and Cheryl Mills cannot have it both ways.  If Cheryl Mills has a protected status under attorney-client privilege, because she was Hillary's attorney while she was Secretary of State, she needs to refund to the taxpayer her entire salary, for the four years or so that she was there, and then I'll be happy to have the FBI grant her all the protection and confidentiality she can eat.

But I paid her frigging salary for those four years, as a taxpayer, and I sure as heck did not pay her to be Hillary's lawyer.  She was paid to be the chief of staff as well as counsel to the secretary, meaning that she was privy to the goings-on and the emails because, as chief of staff, she was running the office of the secretary.  Being paid to be the counsel to the secretary, well, that is providing legal advice to the office of the secretary, not as personal lawyer to Hillary Clinton.

The only way that anyone could recognize that Cheryl Mills had a shred of attorney-client privilege between 2009 and 2013 would have been if she had not had a taxpayer-paid job in that time, and her lawyering was to Hillary the person as opposed to Hillary the Secretary of State.

We certainly need for someone, perhaps one of the senior Republicans on the House committee that was grilling James Comey, to point out that, by taking a salary from the Federal government, Cheryl Mills cannot claim that she was also Hillary's personal lawyer, even if she was paid for legal fees by Hillary privately, on the side.

That's called a "conflict of interest."  It appears not to concern the left, the Obamists and the Clintonistas.

But it sure as heck concerns me.  And it should bother you too.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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