Clinton’s actions not criminal. What about her integrity?
When I heard the director of the FBI’s announcement yesterday afternoon regarding the non-prosecution of Hillary Clinton, I had the same awful feeling the day that O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his wife. Everyone I spoke with at the time felt that O.J. was a murderer but was set free when the prosecution failed to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it.
Today, while I am certain all of the diehard Clinton supporters took this announcement as a sign of Hillary’s exoneration of criminal activity related to her email activity, I tried to read between the lines based on my actual experience in bringing criminal cases to Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) for prosecution.
What this announcement told me was that Hillary was intelligent enough to isolate herself at arm’s length from violations that could be proven in a court before a jury, but totally was negligent of her responsibilities as secretary of state.
Based on cases that I have investigated and supervised that involved violations of federal law, federal prosecutors will often ask for more investigation by the FBI or decline prosecution of a subject, not because the subject is not guilty, but because the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is too great.
In other words, the FBI and Department of Justice assessed the evidence in this case against Clinton compared with an assessment of the probability of a conviction in the case and then decided to castigate her in public in showing her deliberate lies, but deciding not to try to indict her before a federal grand jury or try her in federal court.
I can only conclude that the FBI did do a proper, in depth investigation (or review, as Hillary refers to it), and that anyone who looks at her lies in this issue must think in their mind a prosecutor’s question commonly used at trials:
“If Hillary lied in respect to the ones outlined in the director’s report, in what other areas has she lied or deliberately misled the American public?”
During my whole career in the FBI, I never conducted a review, just investigations. In a reasonable person's eye, Clinton's negligence and incompetence at the highest level of our government could only lead blind fools to believe Hillary Clinton would stop lying and misleading the American people if elected and magically be transformed into a transparent president of our great country.
I guess the ends justify the means. If you believe Clinton is an honorable person, I have a bridge to sell to you.
The writer is a former FBI supervisory special agent and lives in Myrtle Beach.
This story was originally published July 6, 2016 at 9:47 AM with the headline "Clinton’s actions not criminal. What about her integrity?."