Letting Clinton Off the Hook
http://www.wsj.com/articles/letting-clinton-off-the-hook-1442615837
“Mrs. Clinton’s email abuses deserve public political accountability so voters can see how she’d operate with all of the government’s power at her disposal. And voters are catching on. A mere 35% of voters now consider her to be “honest” and “trustworthy” in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. A special prosecutor would let her hide this political character from public view.”
A special prosecutor for Clinton’s emails is a dumb idea.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell likes to say there’s no education in the second kick of a mule. Maybe not, but Mr. McConnell might want to kick his deputy John Cornyn anyway for asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.
Mr. Cornyn, the senior Senator from Texas and number two in the Republican leadership, says that Justice’s political appointees can’t fairly investigate President Obama’s former Secretary of State. But as dumb political ideas go, a special prosecutor exceeds even Washington expectations. It would let the Administration and Mrs. Clinton off the hook through the 2016 election.
A special counsel would let FBI Director James Comey pass the buck, relieving pressure on his G-men to subject Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information to the same standards they have other officials.
A special prosecutor would also let Mrs. Clinton bury the scandal until well after next year’s Democratic primaries and November election. The Clinton team is desperate to change the subject to anything but the emails, and what better way than to say it’s all being investigated.
Meanwhile, the courts and watchdog groups are forcing more email disclosures each week. Last week former Clinton aide Bryan Pagliano, who set up and maintained her server—and was paid personally by Mrs. Clinton to do so even as he worked at the State Department—took the Fifth in response to a Senate summons.
The court-ordered release of her emails is the reason we now know that her account contained classified information, and that several aides were also conducting business outside of official state computers. A recent Politico review of emails that have now been made public “shows that at least 55 messages now deemed to include classified information appears to have been sent to or from private accounts other than Clinton’s.”
Mrs. Clinton’s email abuses deserve public political accountability so voters can see how she’d operate with all of the government’s power at her disposal. And voters are catching on. A mere 35% of voters now consider her to be “honest” and “trustworthy” in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. A special prosecutor would let her hide this political character from public view.
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