Interviewed by Chris Wallace of Fox News (transcript here, video embedded below), President Obama pulled down the blindfold on Lady Justice and signaled that there was no crime at all when Hillary Clinton set up an unsecured private server and left classified information vulnerable to hacking by the world’s intelligence services. He also created a new category of classification: “top secret top secret” as opposed to mere “top secret,” which he averred to Chris Wallace might be information that could be gleaned from public sources.
All in all, it was a remarkable performance, in which the president of the United States in effect told the Justice Department not to prosecute Hillary Clinton. There was plenty of boilerplate contending that he was not doing so:
WALLACE: Since then, we’ve learned that over 2,000 of her e-mails contained classified material, 22 of the e-mails had top-secret information. Can you still say flatly that she did not jeopardize America’s secrets?OBAMA: I’ve got to be careful because, as you know, there have been investigations, there are hearings, Congress is looking at this. And I haven’t been sorting through each and every aspect of this.
But that doesn’t stop him from sweeping conclusions:
Here’s what I know: Hillary Clinton was an outstanding Secretary of State. She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.
The standard of the law requires gross negligence, not intentionality, but who cares about details like that?
And what I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there are -- there’s classified, and then there’s classified. There’s stuff that is really top secret top secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open source.
But the State Department, which did review the emails and was “sorting through each and every aspect of this,” concluded:
... “several dozen emails” contained classified information, including some now determined to contain information at the “top secret/S.A.P.” level. That designation refers to “special access programs,” which are among the government’s most closely guarded secrets.
And:
… formally deemed any of Clinton’s emails classified at that level, reserved for information that can cause “exceptionally grave” damage to national security if disclosed.
But the president of the United States is on record that this is piddling stuff. Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department, serves at his pleasure. In a blatant example of "whom are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?," heclaims:
"I can guarantee ... I can guarantee that not because I give Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch a directive, that is institutionally how we have always operated," Obama said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. "I do not talk to the Attorney General about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line and always have maintained it. I guarantee it.""I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case but in any case --.period," he added. "Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department because nobody is above the law."
Nope. The fix is in. If the FBI makes a criminal referral, and Lynch declines to prosecute, we are headed for a crisis that will echo Watergate.
Side note: The left has a new tactic for minimizing misdeeds that are inconvenient for it to confront. Naming the issue once is now a way of trivializing it. Only when repeated is it real. Thus, we need to worry about only “top secret top secret” or, as Whoopi Goldberg put it, “rape rape.”
Of course, none of this applies to conservatives.
Video of the complete interview:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/obama_tells_loretta_lynch_to_not_prosecute_hillary_on_classified_email_crimes.html
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