The Clinton E-Mail Scandal And How It Will End

The media are doing their best to keep it very much under the wire, but the Clinton e-mail scandal has been heating up to the point it can't be ignored much longer.

Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III just made an absolutely damning  report to the intelligence committees in the House and Senate to the effect that in addition to 1,340 emails designated “classified” stored on her private home brew server, Mrs. Clinton actually had emails on her server that contained intelligence from “special access programs,” which is “a level of classification beyond even ‘top secret’.”

“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element. These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels,” said the IG letter to lawmakers with oversight of the intelligence community and State Department. “According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.”

'Special Access' is highly restricted to 'need to know' high level persons  because exposure of the intelligence could reveal the source. That could derail an entire method of intel collection, or put an important source in mortal danger. Even the very news that Mrs. Clinton was doing this on an unsecured private server  almost certainly damaged U.S. intelligence collection. Would you provide intel to the U.S. if you found out Mrs. Clinton had been risking your life in this fashion just to pad her corrupt foundation with a few more dishonest dollars, or hide some of her more questionable doings? Would you even remotely consider it?

And yes, the information was definitely hacked.

 Mrs. Clinton at this point is probably  guilty of many breeches of State Department policy as well as outright felonies according to the federal laws covering these matters...for instance, to cite  18 US Code 107:

"Concealment, Removal, or Mutilation Generally: Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. ... and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."

There's also 18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information and quite possibly 18 U.S. Code § 798 – Disclosure of classified information.

The individual who transmits and the individual who receives and retains TS/SCI information on a private server jointly share the guilt for risking the compromise and exploitation of the information by hostile intelligence services. Maximum sentence is a fine and ten years in prison.

That's especially interesting since (a) it could involve Mrs. Clinton's close associates Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills and (b) it's now come out that Mrs. Clinton had a second private server, not the one in Chappaqua, but another satellite server located at the Clinton Family Foundation. Since whatever was on Hillary's server was thus accessible by Bill Clinton and other people at the Clinton Foundation, and since both contained data and documents top secret and higher in classification, whomever accessed this data could likewise be indicted and prosecuted. We also have to wonder whether this satellite server in the Clinton Foundation was used to traffick intel and classified information to foreign powers or other interested customers for 'donations.' Would that surprise anyone, knowing what we know now?

18 U.S. Code § 1505 – Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees. Given the stonewalling and probable perjury based on Mrs. Clinton's various statements before congressional committees, this could easily apply. Even more damaging, it's now been proven that dozens of senior State Department officials knew about Mrs. Clinton's illegal private server and not only covered up for her but openly lied to groups requesting lawful and legitimate  Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compliance. 

According to this law if it can be proven that an accused destroyed, withheld, or concealed the existence of official records being sought under subpoena by a committee of Congress, that accused can be convicted of obstruction of justice under 18 U.S. Code § 1505. The prohibited conduct includes destruction, concealment and withholding of documents, thereby impeding or obstructing the committee’s rightful pursuit of information. The all important  mens rea (proof of intent) is knowledge of the committee’s interest in obtaining the official records in the accused’s custody or control. Violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1505 is a felony with a maximum prison term of five years.

There's a lot more, but I think you get the picture. I merely want to point out how deep the investigations have already gone and what's been discovered, since the media would rather you didn't know.

So moving on, where is this likely to end up?

As I said before on these pages,the FBI and the Justice Department work for President Obama. That the Justice department under the president's carefully chosen racialist Attorney General Loretta Lynch would certainly  go along in simply ignoring all this. But the FBI is a different matter. Whatever their flaws, the FBI has a culture of being incorruptible, of having no tolerance for lawbreaking no matter who's involved.

James Comey, the current head of the Bureau has a long history of the same sort of ethics. He helped prosecute the Gambino crime family, was the lead prosecutor in the case concerning the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and served as assistant attorney general during the Bush administration. He even stood up to President Bush and was willing to resign after he was pressured as acting Attorney General (John Ashcroft had been hospitalized) to "certify" the legality of certain aspects of the NSA surveillance program at that time.

As bad as this scandal is getting, I'm fairly certain that Comey and the FBI will recommend prosecution to Obama's Attorney General. And I  doubt that letting Mrs Clinton slide on this blatant lawbreaking wouldn't be met by resignations from James Comey and a number of other FBI personnel. That would shine a spotlight on all this that would not benefit Mrs. Clinton's political ambitions at all.

While President Barack Hussein Obama has no love for the Clintons and would undoubtedly giggle uncontrollably at the idea of one or both Clintons doing the perp walk, he likewise has problems with the scenario of her being  prosecuted. Can you imagine what could happen if Mrs. Clinton were indicted and decided to trade immunity for everything she knows about Fast and Furious, Benghazi and numerous other scandals she has to have been privy to? Just imagine if she once heard the president bragging about how he was using the IRS as a political weapon! There may even be things the renowned Clinton opposition research uncovered about Barack Obama as long ago as 2008 that this president would rather the American public remains ignorant about. At this point, he's not facing re-election but has his legacy to consider, and Mrs. Clinton could do quite a bit to destroy that were she so inclined.

But if he has the Department of Justice ignore this, President Obama risks spotlighting this in a way that further tarnishes what is already the worst presidency in U.S. history in a way not even some of the True Believers will be able to stomach. And it also risks reminding the electorate at a crucial time who Hillary Clinton is, to the point that she gets beat like a gong come election time.

But if he allows her to be prosecuted, he's playing with dynamite that could explode in his face painfully as she deals for her freedom. Not only that, but he has to deal with Bernie Sanders as the nominee, who isn't under his control at this point and who would likely get slaughtered in the general election.

What to do?

So I'm going to make a prediction here. President Obama will not prosecute her, but will have a Mob-style sit down and  make a deal with the Clintons. If Mrs. Clinton ends her campaign and maintains omerta, he will issue her a full pardon for any wrongdoing she might have done "in recognition of her long record of dedicated public service." She'll keep her ill-gotten gains and stay out of jail provided she ends her campaign and keeps her mouth shut.

Once she ends her campaign, the Bernie Sanders problem will be dealt with by having Joe Biden declare his candidacy with the full backing of the White House, Hillary's endorsement and the support of the Democrat super-delegates.

Watch and see if that's not how things turn out.