RUTHFULLY YOURS

It looks like our contributor, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, was right last week. FBI Director James Comey’s review of newly discovered Hillary Clinton-related emails was never going to change his legal judgment because the FBI and Justice Department handling of the case was never serious in the first place.

The Justice Department never went to a grand jury in the case, which was needed to gather all appropriate evidence and vet the legal charges. Judge Mukasey’s judgment was vindicated on Sunday when Mr. Comey sent a letter to Congress saying that the FBI had reviewed the new emails and “we have not changed our conclusion that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

To rehearse Mr. Comey’s actions: In July he publicly exonerates Mrs. Clinton in an extraordinary press event, two weeks before she is to be nominated for President, though that is not his responsibility. He thus liberates Attorney General Loretta Lynch from her decision-making obligations as the nation’s chief prosecuting official. Later we learn Justice cut needless and generous immunity deals with Mrs. Clinton’s advisers.

Then 11 days before Election Day Mr. Comey sends a letter to Congress saying the FBI has found new email evidence. He comes under ferocious Democratic assault for meddling in the final days of the campaign. His boss, President Obama, joins the criticism and says Mrs. Clinton has already been exonerated. Then two days before the election Mr. Comey sends another letter exonerating Mrs. Clinton again. And Washington’s political class wonders why Americans don’t trust government?

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the main point of Mr. Comey’s many political interventions has always been to protect Mr. Comey’s job and political standing. Certainly Mrs. Clinton will have cause to be grateful to Mr. Comey if she wins on Tuesday. The price to the country is the damage he has done to the reputation of the FBI as an apolitical law-enforcement agency.

A recent exposé by FOX News Channel’s Bret Baier and his Special Report team, exposed and chronicled a damning timeline and some internal practices that prove the Clintons – both Bill and Hillary – did, in fact, have a “pay-to-play” scheme in place entangling the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation. It also proves that senior staff within the Clinton campaign knew there was damaging information held within the emails trafficked over Hillary Clinton’s private unauthorized server, including correspondence between Clinton and President Obama.

These revelations alone, regardless of what FBI Director James Comey believes is actionable within either of the FBI investigations, had the potential to end Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. Alas, the mainstream media is so intent on providing cover and refuge for all of Hillary Clinton’s unethical and criminal acts – by Comey’s own description in his first announcement, that she is getting the pass of the millennium.

Since the re-institution of the original criminal investigation by the FBI and the revelation of a second investigation by multiple FBI offices targeting the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton has dropped like a rock in the polls. This decline is especially felt in several of the critical swing states, including Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Comey’s statement today that he is standing by his earlier decision not to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton for additional instances of mishandling classified information will most likely have no effect on the polls at all, although it will give the Clinton team a closing argument centered on deflection and ambiguity. The fact remains – and it is undeniable – Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information and is being treated in the aftermath as being above the law.

One of the key issues in the email and unauthorized (read: illegal) server scandal is Clinton’s initial and consistent claims to transparency where her communications were concerned. In her first statement on the matter she insisted – in no uncertain terms – that she wanted to combine her personal and government devices for “convenience.” Since then we have learned that she had over a dozen communications devices, some of which her team destroyed…with hammers.

‘Drain the swamp!” GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has insisted before huge crowds increasingly confident of a well-deserved, sorely needed, come-from-behind victory.

But this slogan doesn’t quite capture the urgency of the moment. This one does:

“Flush the toilet!”

Washington’s corruption under Barack Obama and the Clintons has devolved to fetid depths suggestive of the days before indoor plumbing. Step back and shudder at today’s unsanitary state of public affairs.

The Cosa Nostra–like tone that Hillary Clinton has set for herself and her associates suggests a preview for a new film: The Godmother.

As word emerged on March 2, 2015, that Hillary maintained an outlaw e-mail system in her Chappaqua mansion’s basement, WikiLeaks reports, her campaign chairman, John Podesta, e-mailed her top aide, Cheryl Mills: “We’re going to have to dump all those e-mails.” Podesta now claims that the meaning of the word “dump” is to “release, distribute, or otherwise publicize.” This might be plausible, except that Team Clinton then erased some 33,000 “private” e-mails and used BleachBit software to guarantee that Hillary’s server, at least digitally, sleeps with the fishes. Hillary’s aides demolished her 13 communications devices — not the single one that she lied about having, for “convenience” — some with hammers.

Most of this happened while these public records were under congressional subpoena. This is called obstruction of justice.

Bryan Pagliano, the computer whiz who managed Hillary’s clandestine server, initially took the Fifth Amendment while under congressional scrutiny. But he twice couldn’t be bothered to show up in September, despite being subpoenaed by the House Government Oversight Committee.

Meanwhile, five different FBI offices are probing the Clinton Foundation on suspicion of public corruption. The Wall Street Journal called this “a sprawling cross-country effort.” Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, citing “more than six” sources in the FBI “with specific knowledge of the Clinton investigations,” reported today that “they confirm that there is an active investigation into the Clinton Foundation that has been going on for more than a year. It is continuing, and for those investigators working it, it is a priority.”

While Clinton apologists call the foundation a font of beneficence, its 2014 IRS filings show that it spent a whopping 5.76 percent of its funds on actual charitable activities — far below the 65 percent that the Better Business Bureau calls kosher. That paltry figure also mocks Hillary’s Las Vegas lie, uttered at the final presidential debate on October 19: “We at the Clinton Foundation spend 90 percent — 90 percent of all the money that is donated on behalf of programs of people around the world and in our own country.”

The Clinton Slush Fund . . . uh . . . Foundation seems to be mainly a travel and full-employment program for Hillary’s government in waiting. It’s also a bribe pump that sucks in money and spews out favors.

As detailed in Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash, the IRS wanted information on some $20 billion in 52,000 accounts that well-heeled Americans deposited with the Union Bank of Switzerland. So, UBS gave $60,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary then met in March 2009 with Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey and then intervened with IRS officials on UBS’s behalf. Like magic, IRS asked UBS for only 4,450 accounts — roughly 91 percent fewer than IRS first demanded.

Three days away from the presidential election, the Islamic State issued a seven-page voter guide warning that both candidates will “undoubtedly” break their election promises and U.S. Muslims should skip the voting booth — and that Americans who do vote are “more deserving” of being killed than soldiers.

ISIS even details what it sees as the nominees’ worst qualities: that Hillary Clinton is a woman, and Donald Trump is “impulsive and unpredictable.”

The release from ISIS’ Al-Hayat Media Center titled “The Murtadd Vote” — the apostate vote — begins with the first George W. Bush administration and the up to 80 percent of Muslims who voted for the Texas Republican over Vice President Al Gore.

“Thus, in addition to committing the apostasy of democratic voting, they share in the crimes committed by Bush against Islam and the Muslims throughout his eight years of rule. The murtadd voters, however, did not learn, as by 2008, Obama got up to 90 percent of their vote,” the booklet reads. “And after almost thirty years of history proving to the entire world that there is no difference between the American Republican and Democratic parties in their policies against Islam and Muslims, the murtadd imams of the so-called ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ and its sister sects continue to advocate voting in the pagan festivals of US democracy, this time campaigning for the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.”

“They refuse to see that Obama interfered – both directly and indirectly – against the interests of Muslims just as Bush senior, Bill Clinton, and Bush junior had done before him.”

This page of the article includes a footnote: “George W. Bush, John McCain, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, John Kerry, and so forth are all supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). So how can the murtadd imams of the West claim there is any real difference for Muslims between the various US presidential nominees and candidates?”

“The only differences between Trump and Clinton are that Clinton is more skilled in ‘political correctness,’ giving her leverage in the sorcery of hypocrisy,” the ISIS article argues, adding she’s a “female feminist” and the Prophet Muhammad said “never shall a people who give their leadership to a woman be successful.”

Clinton, they continued, sees American Islam as “a project that can be projected to other countries, thereby leading more Muslims astray towards apostasy and eternal Hellfire,” while Trump “has yet to learn that what he refers to as ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ is nothing but the teachings of Islam, plain and simple — no adjective needs to precede Islam to describe the just terror it incites.”

On this page is a photo of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, captioned: “Hillary Clinton’s running mate courting a Jewish taghut [legislative rival to Islam].”

The article delves into Quranic arguments on why Muslims shouldn’t vote, noting “as the US presidential election day draws nearer, it becomes necessary to remind others what the shar’i ruling on partaking in the rituals of democracy is and that this ruling remains the same whether or not one of the two candidates is ‘the lesser of the two evils.'”

Whoever votes, ISIS declares, “is an apostate whether he is an open secularist or an alleged ‘Islamist,’ as legislation is Allah’s alone and judgment is his alone, not for the people, nor the constitution of the people, nor the representatives of the people.”

The pages also included a photo of Trump “courting Jews at the AIPAC convention” this year and of Khizr Khan — “a murtadd supporting Hillary Clinton and the taghut constitution” — holding his pocket Constitution aloft at the Democratic National Convention.

I recently met with an academic colleague for drinks, and the conversation quickly turned, as seems inevitable these days, to American politics. She was appalled when I expressed my admiration for Donald Trump. How could I break ranks so egregiously? After all, she expatiated, Trump wants to end all immigration to the U.S., he hates Muslims, he intends to launch a vendetta against Mexicans, he is an uneducated barbarian and an unscrupulous mountebank to boot.

I explained that she had been conned by the media blitzkrieg against Trump and had not considered his stated policies, for which he has gone on public record: To reduce the multi-trillion dollar American debt, bring jobs back to a country suffering massive unemployment, seal the porous southern border in order to stem what amounts to an invasion of the homeland, monitor immigration protocols to prevent the Muslimization of the United States and limit jihadist attacks, and stamp out high-level corruption. Anyone against these legitimate and necessary endeavors has either been fast asleep or is in sync with the forces of destruction. What, then, was her position on these issues?

No answer was forthcoming. I was, apparently, an alt-right apologist for political oppression, a traitor to the morally enlightened consensus, and, to put it succinctly, a lost cause. She rose from the table and walked out with an expression of contempt on her face. I suppose one could expect little different from someone who reads only The Huffington Post, The New York Times, the National Post and the Toronto Star, and listens to the pap spewed out by the CBC, CNN and MSNBC. Like most liberals, she was wholly unfamiliar with the countervailing literature and was therefore in no position to weigh evidence, balance competing viewpoints, and make an informed judgment. And like most leftists, her only response to an opposing argument was to shut down the debate. Trump was doubtless the monster rising from the Black Lagoon, slavering to devour the country. Case closed.

I have met people more or less like Trump, businessmen with whom my father had dealings when he was, prior to going bankrupt, a flamboyant millionaire. These men were not so much the salt of the earth as the pepper of the earth—colorful men with fiery temperaments, with neither academic credentials nor pretensions, rough hewn in some ways but likable once you got to know them, and totally indifferent to what people thought of them. They were like characters out of Mordecai Richler: eccentric, highly successful, not always totally immaculate in their transactions, but generally sensitive to the needs of their employees and capable of unexpected charm. When I exchange impressions with people who have come to know Trump, whether personally or indirectly, I feel that I recognize him.