Three Strikes and You're Out, Hillary - Daniel John Sobieski

by Daniel John Sobieski

The announcement by the State Department of an investigation into the activities of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation during her tenure as secretary may be her third strike politically.

Under the three strikes law, your third felony puts you in prison for the rest of your life. Hillary Clinton has yet to be officially charged with a felony. However, with investigations by that charter member of the vast member of the vast right wing conspiracy, the FBI, already underway, the announcement by the State Department of an investigation into the activities of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation during her tenure as secretary may be her third strike politically. As Chris Cillizza writes in the Washington Post:

By my count, this latest State Department inquiry makes for three active investigations by the federal government that touch directly or indirectly on the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner.

1. The newly revealed State inquiry into the Clinton Foundation and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin

2. The ongoing State inquiry into Clinton's private email server

3. The FBI investigation into Clinton's email server

The FBI investigation has actually gone beyond the issue of classified material being stored on her private email server that was vulnerable to foreign hackers. It now extends, as outlets like the Blaze have reported issue of public corruption regarding the Clinton Foundation:

The FBI is expanding its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, Fox News reported Monday morning.

According to the report, the FBI is looking into the possibility that Clinton violated public corruption laws by allowing her work at the State Department to overlap with her work at the non-profit Clinton Foundation. The new probe is in addition to the ongoing investigation into whether or not Clinton knowingly communicated classified information through her non-secure email server.
“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” an anonymous FBI source told Fox News.

This is an awful lot of smoke where there is supposed to be no fire as investigations into the opaque finances of the Clinton Foundation, which include huge foreign donations, examine possible public corruption involving quid pro quos involving foreign policy decisions and even Clinton staff and advisers feeding at public and private troughs simultaneously. As the Washington Post reports, the State Department’s inspector general, a GOP plant according to Team Clinton, is looking at both public corruption involving the Clinton Foundation and the somewhat mysterious role of Clinton advisor and confidante, Huma Abedin:

Investigators with the State Department issued a subpoena to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation last fall seeking documents about the charity’s projects that may have required approval from the federal government during Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state, according to people familiar with the subpoena and written correspondence about it.
The subpoena also asked for records related to Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide who for six months in 2012 was employed simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation, Clinton’s personal office, and a private consulting firm with ties to the Clintons.

As for the mails, Clinton has maintained that she did not receive or send any material marked classified. She forgets that material is not classified because it is marked, but is rather marked because it is classified. She should have known from the content certain items were classified, and maybe she did. One Hillary email instructs an aide to remove any such headings and markings and send via unsecured means, such as by fax:

Has the State Department released a smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal? In a thread from June 2011, Hillary exchanges e-mails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel.

As for the Clinton Foundation, Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), for example, once pondered Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to designate the Nigerian terrorist organization, Boko Haram, which has since pledged allegiance to the Islamic state, as a terrorist group:

Last May, we wondered why for two years on Hillary Clinton’s watch the State Department refused to designate a Nigerian Islamist group as a terrorist organization. This group has murdered thousands as it wages a real war on women. As Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast reports, the Clinton State Department “refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011” after the group bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last week asking for all of Hillary’s records relating to Boko Haram and her reluctance to designate it a foreign terrorist organization.
Vitter also requested all of Hillary’s communications with Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian construction tycoon who has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation. Vitter noted that Chagoury had a financial interest in the potential impact of designating Boko Haram a terrorist group

As for Huma Abedin, her association with Hillary Clinton has proven personally profitable and but damaging to America’s national security interests. As IBD notes: 

Abedin made $135,000 a year as Clinton’s deputy, a period in which she is reported to have raked in as much as $355,000 from consulting contracts. Having a pipeline into the Clinton inner circle is invaluable to some. This reminds us of Johnny Chung’s famous comparison of the Clinton White House to a subway turn style -- you had to put money in to gain entry
Abedin also has some interesting family connections. Her father is said to be close with the Saudi government’s Muslim World League, and her mother is said to be a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. World Trade Center bombing prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review: “The ties of Ms. Abedin’s father, mother and brother to the Muslim Brotherhood are both specific and substantiated.”
The Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt with the Obama administration’s approval after it had all but abandoned the government of Hosni Mubarak, a long-time ally and friend. It was while Abedin was advising Hillary that State dropped its long-standing policy of having no dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hillary Clinton may indeed make political history, but not because of her gender. Multiple investigations are likely to result in a criminal referral, at least from the FBI, and even should she run the gauntlet through the nomination and election process, she may wind up being the first president to pardon herself.
 

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.      

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/three_strikes_and_youre_out_hillary.html

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