Of Christie and Clinton The Republican Gets Investigated by Justice and the FBI, but the Democrat Doesn’t.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/of-christie-and-clinton-1430688732
A federal prosecutor handed up indictments Friday in New Jersey’s bridge-closure scandal after a 16-month probe. Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t implicated, but the investigation has damaged his political standing. Many pundits say the bridge closure by aides to punish a political opponent should disqualify Mr. Christie from running for President, though there’s no evidence he knew what his aides were doing.
Voters can make up their own mind, but this also raises the ripe question of disparate political treatment. Specifically, is anyone at Justice or the FBI investigating the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton for accepting foreign donations while she was Secretary of State? The risk of quid-pro-quo corruption involving U.S. foreign policy would seem to be at least as important as commuter inconvenience at the George Washington Bridge.
Start with Canadian mining executives and business partners, Ian Telfer and Frank Giustra, who donated millions to the Clinton Foundation in the years leading up to, and during, a government review of a uranium mine deal in which Mr. Telfer’s company stood to benefit. Mrs. Clinton was one of several government officials on a committee that approved the sale of the mines to the Russians.
Bill Clinton was invited at about the same time to give a speech in Moscow by a bank with ties to the Kremlin and the mining company. He was paid $500,000. Mr. Clinton’s speaking income also accelerated after Mrs. Clinton joined State, raking in $48 million during her tenure.
The Clinton Foundation agreed with the Obama White House not to accept donations from foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton was secretary. But we now know there were exceptions, and that donors during that period included Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. They also included a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government—which the foundation failed to have reviewed by State—while Algeria was lobbying State to ease its criticism of its human-rights record.
This newspaper reported in February that as secretary Mrs. Clinton lobbied governments to sign deals and change restrictions aiding U.S. companies that happened to be donating to the Clinton Foundation. At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to the Journal’s analysis of public and foundation disclosures.
The foundation and the Clintons insist there isn’t a “shred” of evidence that these actions were illegal, but the facts certainly would seem to warrant an investigation. All the more so given that Mrs. Clinton has admitted erasing emails from her tenure at State that she kept on her personal server.
The FBI spent years investigating New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez on accusations that he did government favors for a friend in return for Super PAC donations and plane trips. The Senator has been indicted on charges that this was a quid pro quo, yet Mr. Menendez failed to get the government to change a Medicare reimbursement rule. The Canadian mining donors got what they wanted.
In January Justice won a corruption conviction against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell for accepting some $177,000 in loans and gifts from Jonnie Williams, the head of a dietary supplements company. Mr. Williams supposedly wanted the state to run clinical trials, but the state never did.
FBI Director James Comey’s seeming lack of curiosity regarding the Clintons is especially notable considering his zealous history. Media reports say the FBI wanted former CIA Director David Petraeus to be charged with a felony for mishandling classified information, though in the end Mr. Petraeus pleaded to a misdemeanor. Mr. Comey boasted at a February news conference: “We are a little bit in the business of scaring people straight.”
The FBI doesn’t need political permission to begin an investigation. And notably the FBI probe of Mr. Petraeus began based on nothing more than a complaint from a woman in Florida concerning emails she regarded as harassment from Mr. Petraeus’s biographer.
There’s already far more on the public record involving foreign influence-peddling and the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department and FBI are suffering from declining public esteem because their prosecutions seem to be heavily influenced by politics. Giving the Clintons a pass on their foreign donors while investigating Mr. Christie for months shows a political double standard in operation.
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