RUTHFULLY YOURS

When it comes to Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, the most important thing to bear in mind — even more than classified information — is this: It was all about avoiding accountability.

It still is.

Mrs. Clinton did not set out to damage national security and compromise defense secrets, although she obviously had no compunction about doing so as necessary to serve her higher personal interests. For a generation, she has been a public person whose most intimate companion has been scandal. She knew her State Department stewardship would be no different. Her motive in designing a communication system that circumvented government recordkeeping and disclosure laws was to avoid a day of reckoning as she campaigned in 2016 for the power of the presidency she craves.

And that is where Loretta Lynch comes in.

That would be the same Loretta Lynch who came to prominence in 1999 by being appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York by none other than Mrs. Clinton’s husband. Loretta Lynch, who had a history of significant political contributions to Democratic-party candidates before President Obama reappointed her as U.S. Attorney for the EDNY in 2010, and then elevated her to U.S. attorney general in 2015. Loretta Lynch, who said in her confirmation hearings that she supports the Democratic president’s lawless executive actions and non-enforcement of federal law. Loretta Lynch, who very much likes being attorney general of the United States and would be well positioned to continue in that powerful post in a Hillary Clinton administration.

The known evidence that Mrs. Clinton committed federal crimes is abundant, perhaps even overwhelming. It is manifest that she lawlessly transmitted and stored classified information outside its secure system, and that she caused her underlings to do so. But remember, there is also the evidence that is unknown to the public — though it is being pored over by the FBI: the 32,000 e-mails Clinton refused to turn over to the State Department (which involved converting them to her private use) and attempted to destroy by trying to delete them (i.e., to wipe her private server clean).

As I’ve previously pointed out, the federal embezzlement statute makes it a felony to destroy government files or convert them to one’s private use. The FBI has reportedly been able to recover at least some and possibly all of the e-mails Clinton tried to erase. Unless you really believe that one of the busiest high officials in the U.S. government had time for 32,000 e-mails about yoga routines and Chelsea’s wedding dress, it is inevitable that some of those e-mails, probably a goodly portion, related to State Department business — i.e., they were government files.

With such neon indicators of serious wrongdoing, it seems highly likely that the FBI, which has reportedly devoted substantial time and resources to the investigation, will recommend prosecution. For all we know, that may have happened already. Once such a recommendation has been made, the ball is in the Justice Department’s court: It will be up to Attorney General Lynch — with whatever direction she gets from her boss, the president — to decide whether to indict Clinton.

An indictment would be devastating to the Democrats’ chances of retaining the White House in the November election. Thus, the conventional wisdom holds that Lynch will decline prosecution, which the executive branch has the unreviewable constitutional power to do, regardless of how damning the proof of crimes might be.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? And to be clear, I am not suggesting that Lynch will shock the world by approving an indictment against her party’s candidate for the presidency.

What if Loretta Lynch simply decides to . . . do nothing?

Thanks to e-pal J.Poller
Even Trump’s most trusted advisors didn’t expect him to fare this well.

Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it.

The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy.

It pains me to say, but he is the presidential equivalent of Sanjaya on American Idol. President Trump would be President Sanjaya in terms of legitimacy and authority.

And I am now taking full responsibility for helping create this monster — and reaching out directly to those voters who, like me, wanted Trump to be the real deal.

My support for Trump began probably like yours did. Similar to so many other Americans, I was tired of the rhetoric in Washington. Negativity and stubbornness were at an all-time high, and the presidential prospects didn’t look promising.

In 2015, I fell in love with the idea of the protest candidate who was not bought by corporations. A man who sat in a Manhattan high-rise he had built, making waves as a straight talker with a business background, full of successes and failures, who wanted America to return to greatness.

I was sold.

Last summer, I signed on as the Communications Director of the Make America Great Again Super PAC.

It was still early in the Trump campaign, and we hit the ground running. His biggest competitor had more than $100 million in a Super PAC. The Jeb Bush deep pockets looked to be the biggest obstacle we faced. We seemed to be up against a steep challenge, especially since a big part of the appeal of a Trump candidacy was not being influenced by PAC money.

[READ: Donald Trump’s Hate Speech Is Breeding Violence and There Is More to Come]

After the first debate, I was more anxious than ever to support Trump. The exchange with Megyn Kelly was like manna from heaven for a communications director. She appeared like yet another reporter trying to kick out the guest who wasn’t invited to the party. At the time, I felt excited for the change to the debate he could bring. I began realizing the man really resonates with the masses and would bring people to the process who had never participated before.

That was inspiring to me.

It wasn’t long before every day I awoke to a buzzing phone and a shaking head because Trump had said something politically incorrect the night before. I have been around politics long enough to know that the other side will pounce on any and every opportunity to smear a candidate.

But something surprising and absolutely unexpected happened. Every other candidate misestimated the anger and outrage of the “silent majority” of Americans who are not a part of the liberal elite. So with each statement came a jump in the polls. Just when I thought we were finished, The Donald gained more popularity.

I don’t think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all.

He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver’s seat, and nothing else matters. The Donald does not fail. The Donald does not have any weakness. The Donald is his own biggest enemy.

A devastating terrorist attack in Pakistan targeting Christians occurred on Easter Sunday, and Trump’s response was to tweet, “Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead, 400 injured. I alone can solve.”

‘I alone can solve.”

Donald Trump, who can barely communicate in his native language, is the candidate of the social-media era, and the above sentiment — proffered to the electorate via Twitter in regard to Islamic terrorism — is in fact indicative of the breadth and depth of his thinking.

Trump is an example of the Stupid Psychopath Problem.

The Stupid Psychopath Problem does not plague stupid psychopaths exclusively, but they are most vulnerable to its seduction. I will leave it to the medical professionals to diagnose whatever it is that ails Trump psychiatrically; as for the stupid part, my belief is that you can learn a great deal about a person from the way he writes and speaks (my former students may recall that I am not an easy grader), and Trump’s use of language suggests very strongly that he is . . . very fortunate to have inherited a great deal of money and real estate. So dumb he thinks a manila folder is a Filipino contortionist. So dumb he thinks Tupac Shakur is a religious holiday for the “little short guys that wear yarmulkes” counting his money. Trump is like the ugly building in Chicago with his name on it: There’s a vacancy on the top floor.

The Stupid Psychopath Problem is the political distortion resulting from the fact that a great many people — some of them on barstools, some of them dangerously close to the levers of real power — believe that there are obvious, simple, straightforward solutions to complex problems such as the predations of the Islamic State or the woeful state of U.S. public finances, but that these solutions are not implemented because people in government are too soft, unwilling or unable to get tough and do what needs to be done.

Men such as Donald Trump, and a half a hundred million idiots just like him across the fruited plain, really believe that the reason we haven’t eliminated Islamic terrorism is that it never occurred to anybody in the federal government — including the people who run, e.g., the U.S. Special Operations Command — to get tough. These people imagine that the trained killers in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and the often ruthless men who oversee them in Washington, simply are not willing to do what it takes to win. What that means, these people have no idea, because they are unwilling to think very hard about these sorts of problems and generally have no experience themselves. Trump is famously a physical coward who lied to stay out of the military during the Vietnam war, and he knows nothing about foreign policy, national defense, or the workings of the military, which is why all we ever hear from him is “get tough” and “win.”

Back in January, I asked: “Why the Sudden Love Among Establishment Republicans for Donald Trump?” “It has,” I wrote, “been quite an experience — half amusing, half alarming — to behold the sudden transformation of Donald Trump from pariah to desperate hope of the Republican Party.”

In the weeks that have followed, more and more GOP-friendly pundits, functionaries, factota, courtiers, lackeys, lobbyists, consultants, and eminences grises have boarded the Trump Express. They explain, if pressed, that: a) Trump is inevitable and one has to get with the program; and/or b) the only alternative is Hillary Clinton, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?

I confess that I don’t find either rejoinder particularly convincing. In the first place, it is worth noting how frequently what we were assured was inevitable turns out to have been merely contingent, and being merely contingent, how often it fails to happen.

Trump may be the nominee. It is not, however, inevitable. I am not even convinced that it is likely.

And speaking of unlikely things, it is not at all clear to me that Hillary will be the nominee, either. Her supporters might not care that she blamed Benghazi on an internet video or that she endangered American national security by her cavalier disregard of communication protocols while secretary of state, but the FBI seems to be taking a different view of the matter. There is also the cognate issue of the pay-to-play processes of the Clinton Foundation, which have also attracted the FBI’s attention.

Imagine if Senator Barack Obama, facing a possible presidential convention battle, had warned that if he didn’t get the nomination: “I think you’d have riots.” Then, to be statesmanlike and magnanimous, he added: “I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”

Conservatives would have exploded in justified indignation at this threat of civil violence, which they would inevitably understand as carrying a racial subtext. Even Al Sharpton has never been so shameless as to warn explicitly that if, say, this or that cop isn’t indicted or convicted there would be riots. Instead, the riot threat from Sharpton and other black activists remains merely implicit in the “No Justice, No Peace” agitation.

So what is the difference when Trump overtly threatens riots? His supporters, both in the grass roots and the commentariat, have ignored or brushed off his reckless warning. Is it because white people don’t riot? Actually, they occasionally do, as the intermittent store-smashing during the “No Global” protests of the 2000s showed. To be sure, industrial-strength riots over the last year and a half and over the last four decades were overwhelmingly black. And the professional white anarchists who vandalize Starbucks and McDonald’s outlets during anti-globalization rallies are a very different demographic than Trump’s supporters.

Is he chicken? Is he afraid?

His people will make excuses: it’s the smart thing to do. What if he accidentally flubs and stops momentum? Why take the chance?

I don’t buy it. He exited Fox’s forthcoming debate, formerly scheduled for next week, because he fears that Cruz, who is in second place in the GOP presidential race, will beat him. That’s the way it looks. In schoolyard terms, he’s running from a one-on-one, a mano-a-mano. That’s not the way to win respect – especially from the tough, politically incorrect base that seems to make up much of his support. I’m surprised they aren’t making a fuss. If Trump is going to kick butt in Washington and make America great again, what’s he doing backing down from mild-mannered Ted Cruz?

Cruz isn’t Hulk Hogan. He isn’t Albert Einstein.

The problem is, Cruz knows conservatism, has lived it, and has put his political life on the line for it. He’s also a champion debater, a lawyer who has argued in front of the Supreme Court, and a man who speaks from the heart – because he believes what he’s saying. Trump certainly speaks from the heart. But he doesn’t know the issues like Cruz? At best, he’s learning.

Whatever the reason, he won’t meet Cruz on the playing field. He’s backed out, canceled his appearance on what was to be the next Fox debate. This lack of courage on Trump’s part is a travesty. It’s a disservice to the very people he hopes to win and lead. Fear of making a wrong move on the debate stage is not the way a potential president of the United States should be thinking.

Marco Rubio’s speech suspending his campaign after his crushing loss in the Florida primary was a requiem for an entire style of Republican politics.

Rubio represented an upbeat, opportunity-oriented vein in the GOP that ran through George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism back to the late supply-sider Jack Kemp, who practically made a civic religion out of optimism and inclusivity.

Donald Trump has grabbed this Kempian tradition by the collar and frog-marched it from the room with all the delicacy of one of his security guards ejecting a troublesome protester from a rally.

Kemp, a former pro quarterback who was a congressman from Buffalo for years, was the chief proponent of the Reagan tax cuts. To read the recent biography of him by journalists Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke, Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America, is to be struck by Kemp’s touching naiveté by the standards of the 2016 GOP race.

Kemp eschewed personal attacks and opposed negative campaigning. He believed “the purpose of politics is not to defeat your opponent as much as it is to provide superior leadership and better ideas.” And the central idea was, always and everywhere, tax cuts.

Kemp wanted the GOP to be a “natural home of African-Americans.” He favored openhandedness on immigration. He cared deeply about the plight of the urban poor, and about what he called — long before Jeb Bush — “the right to rise.”

In foreign policy, he was a friend of freedom and stalwart advocate of human rights.

Kemp influenced the debate and a generation of conservatives, but his own flaws as a highly undisciplined candidate and the monomania with which he hewed to his ideas limited him as a candidate at the national level.

But Kempism lived on in George W. Bush, whose compassionate conservatism was latitudinarian on immigration and sought to win over minorities by softening conservatism’s edges.

Bush’s foremost domestic achievement was an enormous tax cut, and his Freedom Agenda was a Kemp-like advocacy of human rights on steroids.

Like the eye of a hurricane, Donald J. Trump almost magically keeps himself at the very center of attention, no matter what chaos surrounds him. This phenomenon and the relentless and exhausting drama of the Democratic and GOP presidential primaries largely have kept the eyes of the world off Hillary Clinton and the increasingly ominous developments in the E-mailgate scandal. Despite the former secretary of state’s impressive ballot-box victories, her ethical woes multiply.

The number of classified e-mails on Clinton’s private computer server totals 2,115. At her initial March 10, 2015, news conference on this fiasco, Clinton claimed that “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.” Actually, “no” such e-mails actually exceed by 99 the number of years since the birth of Christ.

If the first reports on this intelligence catastrophe indicated that Clinton’s server contained two thousand one hundred and fifteen classified e-mails, the Duchess of Chappaqua would have left her press conference in the back of a squad car.

Clinton’s server held at least 22 e-mails that are too Top Secret to be made public, even if redacted. Moreover, the Washington Post reports that Clinton’s server contained 104 dispatches in which “officials have determined that material Clinton herself wrote in the body of email messages is classified.”

The Post quoted a former senior functionary who is angered by today’s public display of e-mails that were sent securely and expected to remain quiet.

“I resent the fact that we’re in this situation,” the official said, “and we’re in this situation because of Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private server.”

There is a line from John Adams of which conservatives, particularly those of a moralistic bent, are fond: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” The surrounding prose is quoted much less frequently, and it is stern stuff dealing with one of Adams’s great fears — one that is particularly relevant to this moment in our history.

John Adams hated democracy and he feared what was known in the language of the time as “passion.” Adams’s famous assessment: “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.” Democracy, he wrote, “never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”

If you are wondering why that pedantic conservative friend of yours corrects you every time you describe our form of government as democracy — “It’s a republic!” he will insist — that is why. Your pedantic conservative friend probably is supporting Ted Cruz. The democratic passions that so terrified Adams have filled the sails of Donald Trump.

At some point within the past few decades (it is difficult to identify the exact genesis) the rhetorical affectation of politicians’ presuming to speak for “We the People” became fashionable. Three words from the preamble to the Constitution came to stand in for a particular point of view and a particular set of assumptions present in both of our major national political tendencies. Molly Ivins, the shallow progressive polemicist, liked to thunder that “We the People don’t have a lobbyist!” She liked to call lobbyists “lobsters,” too, a half-joke that she, at least, never tired of. Dr. Ben Carson likes to draft “We the People” into his service. Sean Hannity is very fond of the phrase, and so-called conservative talk radio currently relies heavily on the assumption that the phrase is intended to communicate: that there exists on one side of a line a group of people called “Americans” and on the other side a group called “the Establishment,” and that “We the People” are getting screwed by “Them.”