The Open and Shut Case Against Hillary Clinton
Through all the twists and turns of this unprecedented election campaign, the enduring question before the voters had remained the same: will America elect a president they don’t trust? Because if the answer was yes, then despite her astronomical negatives on honesty and trustworthiness, Hillary Clinton, with all her gaping, built-in advantages in demographics, money and the media, would likely have been on a glide path to the oval office.
But now, that question has evolved into: will America elect someone under active criminal investigation by the FBI?
That is quite a different proposition. And we now know the investigations are not limited to the Weinergate case being re-opened by the FBI. Hardly. The FBI is by all accounts in the midst of four separate criminal investigations involving the Democrat nominee. Four. Let that sink in for a moment.
Perhaps Mrs. Clinton was on a glide path and a soft landing. But then came Friday, October 28, a day which will live in political infamy no matter the results of this election. There is no debating that this campaign has taken a dramatic turn in the days since.
The roaring river of sewage heading downstream around Mrs. Clinton continues unabated, with Wiki Leaks (and Project Veritas) revealing so much filth, corruption and avert-your-eyes ugliness that one struggles to keep track of it all: the obvious pay-for-play arrangements with foreign donors to her foundation while she was determining national policy towards those same donors, the speaking fees of up to $750,000 a shot lavished on her and her husband by foundation donors, the musings of her campaign manager about “dumping” emails right after they were subpoenaed by congress, the destruction of evidence in a congressional probe (deleted emails, devices obliterated with hammers), the hidden-camera bragging by Clinton operatives about conducting voter fraud and its 50 year history in the Democratic party, the rent-a-mob incitement of violence at Trump rallies (while the media continues to pound on “hate-filled” Trump supporters), the shameless collaboration of the establishment media with the Clinton campaign, revelations about the contempt this woman and her enablers hold for entire sectors of America – Catholics, evangelicals, southerners, Bernie voters among others…and of course, that basket of deplorables which be her math would constitute tens of millions of Americans.
In his brilliant piece on the Clintons in National Review, Victor Davis Hanson outlines the rampant corruption, contempt and self-dealing of the entire Clinton family enterprise.
Everyone and everything she touches, this woman destroys. From Whitewater to the White House travel office to her husband’s paramours and victims, to the strewn wreckage of humanity certain to be left in her wake once everything now in play is litigated (which could take months), to the FBI, Justice Department and State Department which have all been corrupted by their association with her. The reputations of two successive chairs of the Democratic National Committee destroyed for protecting Mrs. Clinton and collaborating to eliminate Bernie Sanders. Even President Obama, who we now know lied on national TV when he said he had no knowledge of her private server…after communicating with her on it. This is a very partial list.
And to her rank dishonesty and unbroken string of public lies about all of this, does one need to know anything more than how she lied right to the faces of the parents whose sons were murdered in Benghazi? Ask yourself what kind of person would do such a thing.
The most remarkable – and underreported – result of this changing race is that the Republican party is actually, finally united in their message for these waning days of the campaign. While the shrinking pool of never trumpers stubbornly cling to their rejection of Clinton’s opponent, candidates from Trump all the way to down to those running for local offices are now singing from the same sheet music with a three prong attack on Clinton: the FBI re-opening its investigation, the stunning and unending revelations from Wiki Leaks, and the collapse of Obamacare. There is no telling how the harmonious chorus suddenly emanating from the Republican party will affect the outcome, but one has to believe this invigorated and united GOP will do markedly better than the one which up to now was marked by division, recriminations and hand-wringing.
Mrs. Clinton’s commitment to annex Obama’s fundamental transformation of America should by itself have provided a spectacularly compelling rationale for rejecting her candidacy.
But now, the question voters are confronting has almost nothing to do with ideology. The question is: will you elect someone who is so obviously and demonstrably corrupt, and even more importantly, whose presidency would certainly be defined by unending investigations and accusations of criminal activity?
If the answer is somehow yes, then America truly has transformed into a very different nation.
Tim Donner is a featured columnist for Bearing Drift.