The Privileged Hillary Clinton

     Chidem Kurdas

High priests of the American political class are not like you and me. Hillary Clinton’s email scandal provides a vivid illustration of this. Consider:

• If you were under investigation by the FBI, would the Attorney General – the FBI Director’s boss – meet your spouse for a friendly private chat?
• If you faced a civil suit and the lawyers wanted to question you, would the Obama administration come to your assistance by opposing the deposition?
• If you lied while testifying to a Congressional Committee, would Democratic Committee members try to excuse the falsehoods as mere carelessness or ignorance?

These are instances of special treatment that are public and obvious, leaving aside the matter of Ms. Clinton not being indicted. One reply might be that the administration and the Democratic Party have to circle the wagons around her because she’s their presidential nominee. What else are they going to do? She’s not just anybody.

But the Benghazi and private email server debacles happened before the establishment backed her in the primaries.  They knew she was vulnerable and in effect deliberately made a commitment to protect her.

They could have backed some other candidate and avoided these headaches. But if you’re a long-time member of the political class, you may feel protective toward other members. Democrats act as if she’s entitled to special treatment and the Clintons themselves certainly expect it. Oligarchies get that way. Historically they aggressively defended their class privileges; no reason to expect the American version to be different.

The establishment lined up behind Clinton because it did not matter to them that she endangered national security by sending classified State Department emails via her unprotected private server. “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position … should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation,” testified FBI Director Comey regarding top-secret discussions.

Clinton emailed via her unsecure server even while travelling in countries not friendly to the United States.  Comey said “it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.”

Nor did she see any reason to be truthful under oath. She told the House Benghazi Committee that none of the emails were marked classified and that she turned them all over to the investigators. According to Comey’s testimony, those statements are not correct. Anyone else would be charged with perjury. People have gone to prison for less.

The White House supported her against a deposition by Judicial Watch. She claims the emails – including those classified top secret – do not belong to the State Department and therefore are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. By this logic, a government official can escape public scrutiny by communicating with government employees via private channels, thereby blocking Freedom of Information requests. The thought occurs that perhaps she used private servers on purpose so as to deny access to the records.

Oligarchies never have any use for freedom of information. How dare anyone ask them what messages they sent, say when Americans were being murdered in Benghazi?

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Tags: email scandal, Freedom of Information, Hillary Clinton