Although it seems somewhat less certain now that the FBI has reopened their investigation into her emails, I’m assuming that Hillary Clinton is going to win the election on November 8. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it might then be possible to criticize Hillary without being accused of being a Trump supporter. I was so excited about that prospect that I decided to get a jump on things by outlining the reasons Hillary should be impeached the moment she steps into the Oval Office.
There are plenty of reasons to think Hillary will be a lousy President, from her penchant for war-mongering (see: Hillary is the Candidate of the War Machine, How Hillary Became a Hawk, Clinton’s No-Fly Zone Could Provoke War, Hillary Admitted No-Fly Zone Would Kill a Lot of Civilians, Kremlin Believes Hillary Wants to Start a War with Russia); her failure to accomplish anything notable in six years as a U.S. Senator; her horrific track record at the State Department (see: Even critics understate how catastrophically bad the Hillary Clinton-led NATO bombing of Libya was, Hillary and the Syrian Bloodbath, Clinton Backs $500M Effort to Court Taliban, Hillary’s Deadly Iran Deal, Hillary Clinton and Benghazi); the seemingly endless scandals that have plagued her political career (see: Whitewater, travelgate, looting the White House, the death of Vince Foster, missing law firm records, pardongate, her cattle futures windfall, Chinagate); her shameful pandering to Wall Street while pretending to be a champion of the little guy (see: Why Wall Street Loves Hillary, War and Wall Street: Clinton’s Bleak Record, Clinton Says She Has ‘Both a Public and a Private Position’ on Wall Street); her disdain for ordinary Americans, particularly conservatives and Christians (see: Saint Hillary seeks to save Christians from Christianity, Clinton expresses regret for saying ‘half’ of Trump supporters are ‘deplorables’, Top Clinton Aides Mock Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity); her generally nasty personality (Secret Service Agents: Hillary is a Nightmare, Hillary Clinton to K9 Handler, “Get That F**KING Dog Away From Me”, Hillary has long history of beating up Bill behind closed doors); her lack of transparency in dealing with the press and the American people (see: Hillary Clinton’s stumble highlights campaign transparency problems, Clinton’s Weaksauce Excuses for Not Holding Press Conferences, Hillary Clinton told the FBI she couldn’t recall something more than three dozen times, Clinton’s private email account exploits FOIA loophole); her opportunistic flip-flopping and double-dealing on key issues (see: Sanders Rips Hillary Clinton Over Her Many Flip-Flops, Hillary Clinton’s flip flops: from same-sex marriage to TPP, Why it’s tough for Hillary Clinton to explain away her flip-flops); her ongoing health problems (see: Hillary Clinton Blamed Concussion for Memory Failure, Hillary Clinton Took 6 Months to ‘Get Over’ Concussion, Clinton’s eyes — a window into her health issues, Clinton ‘often confused’, Hillary Clinton Needed Someone to ‘Sober Her Up’ at 4:30 in the Afternoon); her role in silencing Bill’s accusers; her history of trashing the First Amendment (see: Hail to the Censor, Hillary Blamed Me for Benghazi) ; and the fact that’s she’s a habitual liar (see: Video of Hillary Clinton ‘lying for 13 minutes’ goes viral, The Quick List of Clinton’s Eight E-mail Lies, The 7 Wildest Lies of Hillary Clinton, False Statements Involving Hillary Clinton, Clinton and Benghazi, Hillary Lies About Lying About Lying).
But this post isn’t a list of reasons Hillary Clinton is unqualified to be President or a list of reasons why she will be a lousy President (although she is and she will).
Reasonable people can disagree on political issues and on what qualifies a person for the Presidency. I’m baffled at how anybody even vaguely familiar with Clinton’s history can enthusiastically support her, although I can understand why some begrudgingly prefer her over Donald Trump. I take it as a given, however, that there are certain minimum standards that a candidate must meet in order to hold the highest office in the U.S. government. For example, a person who is secretly working for a foreign power or who is dedicated to undermining the Constitution or the rule of law is simply unfit to hold the office.
This post is my attempt to demonstrate that Hillary Clinton has no interest in upholding the Constitution, defending the U.S. from its enemies, preserving a democratic form of government, or advancing the general welfare of U.S. citizens. By the time you get to the end of this list, it should be abundantly clear that Hillary is interested in more money and power for Hillary. Everything else is secondary.
1. She intentionally circumvented transparency laws to avoid accountability.
Most of the controversy about the email scandal has centered on the content of the emails themselves. We shouldn’t forget why Hillary set up a private server in the first place, though: to avoid accountability for her communications. “There is no doubt that the scheme she established was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal Records Act,” said Daniel Metcalfe, who advised White House administrations on interpreting the Freedom of Information Act from 1981 to 2007.
2. She deleted emails in an attempt to cover up what she had done.
Clinton claimed under the penalty of perjury that she had turned over all work-related emails, claiming that 33,000 deleted emails were “personal.” Curiously, these “personal emails” were all deleted after a subpoena was issued for the server, and Bleachbit was used to scrub the server of any sign of them. Additionally, Clinton’s lawyers relied on header information and used search terms to find the “work-related” emails. FBI Director Comey stated, “It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.” The FBI report stated they found 17,448 emails she failed to turn over to the Inspector General. In fact, the FBI later recovered many emails that were work-related, including 30 emails about Benghazi. At this point, we have no idea what is in most of the rest of the deleted emails, but it is a near certainty that Clinton deliberately deleted work-related emails.
3. She lied to the FBI, Congress and the American people about her emails.
Hillary lied repeatedly about her email setup. She lied about whether the server setup was permissible, she lied about whether the emails contained classified information, she lied about having turned over all the emails, she lied about whether the server was hacked, and she lied about whether she was ever served a subpoena about the emails. In addition to the lies she told the public, she also appears to have lied to the FBI or to Congress, or both. Either of these actions is a felony.
4. She endangered national security for her own convenience.
Depending on which version of Clinton’s story you believe, either her emails contained no classified information, they contained no information that was marked classified, or they contained information that was marked classified but wasn’t really classified. All of these statements are lies. In total, the investigation found 110 emails in 52 email chains containing information that was classified at the time it was sent or received. Eight chains contained top secret information, the highest level of classification, 36 chains contained secret information, and the remaining eight contained confidential information. Some of the emails that dealt with subjects such as drone strikes in Pakistan and the true names of Central Intelligence Agency intelligence officers serving overseas under cover.
In Director Comey’s words, Clinton was “extremely careless” with classified information. The New York Times marvels at how sloppy the setup was:
She had no full-time cybersecurity professional monitoring her system. She took her BlackBerry everywhere she went, “sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.” Her use of “a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent.”
This information is now almost certainly in the hands of foreign hackers.
5. She corrupted the State Department.
High-level State Department officials worked behind the scenes last year in several key ways to ensure the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails inflicted as little damage as possible on the Democratic nominee. They manipulated redactions, tampered with document reviews, and lost two boxes of emails. Most damning, Patrick Kennedy, State’s undersecretary for management, offered a “quid pro quo” arrangement to the FBI in which the classification status of some of Clinton’s emails would be downgraded in return for additional slots for the bureau overseas. This offer is not only confirmation that State knew the emails contained classified information; it’s a revelation of banana republic-style use of government offices for partisan gain.
6. She corrupted the Justice Department.
It’s impossible to deny at this point that Clinton mishandled classified information. The FBI investigation confirmed that she did. A defense of Clinton at this point rests on finding some daylight between “extreme carelessness” and “gross negligence,” terms which sound an awful like like synonyms to normal people. Comey has been accused of inventing a requirement of intent to avoid a recommendation of prosecution. His argument was essentially that Clinton was stupid, not malicious. The Hill relates:
FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may not have been “sophisticated enough” to understand what the classified markings on emails meant. This lack of “sophistication” was used to explain Clinton’s lack of knowledge that she was breaking the law and hence an absence of intent.
If Clinton, who was a Senator for eight years and Secretary of State for four years, lacked the “sophistication” to understand classified markings, it’s hard to imagine who the law is intended to apply to. We are left to assume that Bradley Manning, a psychologically troubled 23-year-old army private, possessed a level of sophistication Ms. Clinton did not.
As David Harsanyi says in The Federalist, Nothing James Comey Says About The Hillary Clinton Investigation Makes Any Sense. Given the bizarre way the Justice Department has acted in this case, it’s difficult not to conclude that the Justice Department pressured the FBI into not recommending charges.
This possibility seems even more likely given recent revelations about the Justice Department pressuring the FBI to back off their investigations of the Clinton Foundation. Former FBI assistant director James Kallstrom states that agents in the bureau are “furious” at how higher-ups in the federal agency and Justice Department have “stonewalled” requests to open up a probe of the Clinton Foundation. When asked if Justice was taking sides, Kallstrom said, “You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see that. Of course that’s what’s happening.”
On top of that, recently it was revealed that the DOJ probe into Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s emails will be led by Peter Kadzik, a good friend of Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta. Podesta once called Kadzik a “fantastic lawyer” who “kept me out of jail.”
Even Attorney General Janet Lynch, who once promised to stay out of the investigation after an eyebrow-raising meeting with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac, got in on the act, criticizing the way Comey handled the reopening of the case.
7. She corrupted the office of the President.
Contrary to President Obama’s claims that he found out about Hillary’s use of a private email server on the news, Mr. Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others. Obama’s use of a pseudonym implies awareness of the illegal nature of the server and his lie about being ignorant of the server implicates him in the coverup. Whether or not the President attempted directly manipulate the FBI’s investigation, it’s incredibly naive to think that efforts to protect the President had no effect on the course of the investigation. “We need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not say state.gov,” Mills wrote to Podesta.
8. She sold influence at the State Department.
There is so much overlap between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s work at the State Department, and so much secrecy about this overlap, that it strains credulity to believe that the Clinton Foundation isn’t a money-laundering operation for a gigantic pay-for-play scheme. “Cash flowed to Clinton Foundation amid Russian uranium deal,” The New York Times reports. Zero Hedge details how a Clinton Foundation donor bought a seat As Hillary’s nuclear weapons adviser. FOX News reveals that shortly after Hillary Clinton left the Obama administration, the State Department quietly took steps to purchase real estate in Nigeria from a firm whose parent company is owned by a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. ABC News reports that Hillary’s State Department gave special attention to ‘Friends of Bill’ after the Haiti earthquake. Reuters confirms the Clinton Foundation accepted a $1 million “gift” in exchange for a five minute meeting with Bill Clinton, and that this “gift” was not disclosed to the State Department as required by Hillary’s agreement with the Obama administration. International Business Times reports that countries that gave to the foundation saw an increase in State Department-approved arms sales. Saudi Arabia, which gave $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, was approved for a $29 billion purchase of fighter jets. IBT goes on to say that:
The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.
By the way, the Clintons knew at the time of these “gifts” that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding ISIS.
Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story, recently stated:
[I]t’s corrupt. It’s a scandal… [T]he mixing of speech fees, the Clinton Foundation, and actions by the State Department, which she ran, are all intertwined and it’s corrupt.
It was recently revealed that the Clinton Foundation is being investigated by five FBI field offices and that the Justice Department attempted to shut the investigations down.
9. She and the DNC colluded to subvert the electoral process to win the election.
Wikileaks’ releases of hacked emails reveal that Bernie Sanders never had a chance because the DNC was colluding with the Clinton campaign to defeat him. The cynical maneuvering of the Clintonistas is revealed in an exchange where they plot to exploit Sanders’ religious beliefs:
“It might may [sic] no difference, but for KY and WA can we get someone to ask his belief,” Brad Marshall, CFO of DNC, wrote in an email on May 5, 2016. “Does he believe in God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My southern baptist peeps woudl draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
In the wake of these revelations, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign as chair of the DNC.
Whether or not Sanders might have won if he were given a fair shot, this sort of collusion makes a mockery of the whole nomination process. Clinton received the DNC nomination fraudulently.
Additionally, it’s unlikely that this corruption is limited to the Democrat primary. Undercover videos show high-ranking Democrat operatives bragging about inciting violence at Trump rallies and committing vote fraud on a large scale. The videos also seem to indicate that Clinton’s campaign illegally colluded with Super PACs.
10. She’s being protected by the media.
So we have a candidate who has corrupted her party and the highest levels of government. She will never be held responsible for her actions by the Justice Department, and she will likely soon hold the highest office in the land. Ordinarily, we might expect the media to call out such a person for her crimes, but it’s been clear for months that the vast majority of the mainstream media is in the tank for Clinton.
A recent study showed that 96% of political donations by journalists went to Hillary Clinton. Clinton Foundation donors include dozens of media organizations and high profile journalists. These include Google, Twitter, The Washington Post, Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting (the owner of CNN), Comcast, NBC Universal and the owners of Reuters and The New York Times. George Stephanopolous, a former chief of staff for Bill Clinton and current ABC News anchor, failed to disclose that he gave the Foundation $75,000.
Emails leaked by Wikileaks show the cozy relationship between the Clinton campaign and many in the media, including:
Clinton campaign and the New York Times coordinating attack strategy against Trump.
Glen Thrush, POLITICO’s chief political correspondent and senior staff writer for POLITICO Magazine, sends John Podesta an article for his approval. Writes: “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this. Tell me if I fucked up anything.”
CNBC panelist colluding with John Podesta on what to ask Trump when he calls in for an interview.
Clinton staff appearing to control the release times of Associated Press articles.
Donna Brazile was recently fired by CNN for leaking debate questions to Clinton’s campaign. She remains the acting chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
Despite these stunning revelations, the mainstream media virtually ignored the Wikileaks stories. Newbusters relates that the Trump sex scandals were given seven times as much coverage as all the Wikileaks stories combined:
From Friday evening to Thursday morning, the morning and evening news shows on ABC, CBS and NBC dedicated 4 hours and 13 minutes to discussing the recent allegations of sexual misconduct surrounding Donald Trump’s campaign. Meanwhile, not only has the continual release of the WikiLeaks emails from top Hillary staff gotten a comparatively puny 36 minutes of coverage during this same time period, the coverage that is there continues to ignore specifics that could be damaging to Hillary.
Still completely absent from the network coverage? Any mention of the emails where journalists collaborated with the Clinton campaign.
The Federalist laments that The New York Times and The Washingon Post, which broke the Watergate story, have been curiously reluctant to cover the Clinton scandals:
We are now two weeks away from the general election, and once again a potentially devastating story appears to be developing, related to a web of corruption and deceit that could eventually rival the Watergate scandal. Just like 1972, the Post and the Times are fully engaged. Except this time, the “two lions of journalism” have little interest in covering the avalanche of revelations pouring forth against the Clinton campaign. Instead, both publications are working around the clock to bring the Democratic nominee to power. That’s not all. Nearly every other mainstream media outlet in the country has jumped on the bandwagon.
Conclusion
It’s abundantly clear that Hillary Clinton is thoroughly corrupt and unfit for the office of President. It’s also clear that we can’t count on the media to shame Hillary Clinton into resigning. This leaves only one possibility: Impeachment.