James Comey, the hero/villain/victim of the 2016 presidential election, testified before Congress last week, as the Senate Judiciary Committee interviewed him for several hours about the allegations of Russians influencing the 2016 campaign.
I say "campaign", because as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, and note that it was "D") has said openly, there is not a shred of evidence that there was any interaction between the Trump campaign and Russians, although a great deal of oxygen, or whatever Democrats breathe, has been expended to try to swear that there was.
More importantly, there is not a shred of evidence that one single voter in America was influenced by anything a Russian did in casting their ballot, although ... ah, what's her name again ... ah, Hillary Clinton ... still seems to think there was, although she can't find anyone either.
As Comey was being interviewed by the Senate committee, the topic arose of the information that crossed his desk in late October that caused him to go to the congressional committee chairmen -- privately, although they leaked the note -- to say he was reopening the investigation into Mrs. Clinton's use and distribution of classified information on an unsecured private server.
The issue was that Mrs. Clinton had sent classified information to her gopher, Huma Abedin, which on its own would seem like a breach of security in the first place given that Hillary's server was not a government device. But then Huma forwarded the emails to her husband, the very-uncleared Anthony Weiner, he of the frequent texting of pictures of his nether anatomy to young girls.
Why would Huma do that? Comey thought it was so that Weiner could print the content, even though neither the sending of the classified document from Hillary to Huma, the sending of the documents from Huma to the very-uncleared Anthony Weiner, nor the printing out of the documents by Weiner on an unclassified printer, was remotely legal.
And we have to ask the obvious question -- did neither Hillary nor Huma have an actual classified printer at State to print the docs on? Whose brilliant idea was it to go that bizarre route to get a document printed? Does it not smell to you like something other than the inconvenience of a classified printer, but more like Hillary wanted a private copy of a classified document and so had to get it printed other than through normal channels? And if so, why?
The least guilty here, bizarrely, is the pervert himself; on the surface Weiner could be just a stooge of the Clinton organization. He was not cleared (we assume; he might have had a clearance while a congressman but it would have been terminated on his resignation), and did not have a signed document instructing him how to handle classified information. If it came to that, he could logically plead that his wife said "I'm sending you documents, please print them for when I get home. It's OK, Hillary needs them."
Hillary, in most scenarios, is guilty as H-E-double-hockey-sticks, except that if all she did was email the docs to Huma from the unclassified private server, it is only one more incident on top of 2,000+ other classified emails that went through the server she BleachBitted before kindly surrendering it to the FBI. Except, for this episode to be more significant than the 2,000 others, Huma would have to testify, and she can just play the consigliere role, shut up and insulate Hillary.
Huma, on the other hand, has no escape. She signed her clearance documents at a high level, was annually instructed on the handling of such documents and the associated laws, and still consciously sent classified material to an unclassified device (whatever Weiner used). She had been briefed for a high-level clearance, and knew what she was doing was illegal, no matter what Hillary had told her.
Her proper reply was "I'm sorry, Mrs. Clinton, I know you want to have my pervert husband print this classified document so you can have a copy made secretly for your purpose, but it is illegal for me to send a classified document to an unclassified device accessible to an uncleared person. So no, I cannot do that."
A senator asked Comey why she had not been prosecuted, given the revelation. Comey's answer was really peculiar; he stated that they had found no evidence in their investigation that Huma had intended to violate the law.
How bizarre was that? Huma Abedin signed documents every year to the effect that she understood the laws regarding the distribution and handling of classified material. What does "intent" have to do with it? If you remember, the same excuse was made for Hillary Herself, that she wasn't indicted because she didn't "intend" to violate the law, although she, too, had been briefed annually that what she was routinely doing was wrong.
Remember? The excuse of the FBI, or at least of Comey, was that no one had been prosecuted under that law.
Well, now two people are reasonably subject to conviction for violating that law, and it's about time someone at least was charged with violating the law, if you're going to have the law on the books at all!
Huma has no excuse, she so has no excuse. At the very least, she (if not both of them) conspired to violate the law "no one has been charged with" and need to be charged and tried on that offense. No grand jury would ever let them off the hook; they would hand down indictments on both and have them sent to trial.
Huma violated the law; she had to know what she was doing was illegal, and unless the USA wants more of that type of thing, it cannot let her get away with it. She needs to be tried and, if convicted, needs to be imprisoned, lest anyone else think they are above the law -- particularly a government official.
Personally, I've had it. What is the Justice Department's next step?
Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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