Mud Wrestling

It isn’t often that a story comes along that ends up discrediting Hillary Clinton, The New York Times, and the Associated Press but before it’s done I suspect that the story of the IG wanting to launch a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton about her email setup will end up throwing mud on the White House, the Department of Justice, and the IG. Noah Rothman gives a pretty fair summary at Commentary:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign team was surely reveling in the national media’s distracted focus on the messy Republican presidential primary late Thursday night when they got the news. Immediately, her campaign team sprang into action and began the familiar process of muddying the waters and misdirecting reporters with a magician’s mastery. The New York Times had revealed that two independent inspectors general requested that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton for possibly jeopardizing national security by handling classified information on her personal “homebrew” email server. By morning, however, the Times story had been edited several times. Struck from the account was the contention that Clinton had “mishandled sensitive government information” and in its place was the claim that “information was mishandled” by… someone. The lead reporter on that story confessed that the alterations were made at the Clinton campaign’s “reasonable” request. The Associated Press dutifully followed the Times lead and noted that the IG’s referrals do not suggest wrongdoing by Clinton personally – merely her subordinates at the State Department.

Several hours later, the Justice Department indicated that the referrals they received were not criminal, leading to pushback from New York Times reporters who claimed that their sources were solid. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Inspector General’s office is standing by the contention that classified information that was classified as such was sent to Clinton’s private email address. Something bizarre is happening.

What I suspect will come out of this is that the White House will finally and noisily insert itself into the story, revealing naked political interests, and the IG’s office will be slapped down. The ultimate outcome may well be the Hillary Clinton will be elected president.

I’ve made no secret of my distaste for Sec. Clinton. What I think should happen is that she should be compelled to pay a whopping civil penalty (she’s already confessed to regulatory infractions), should be tried for obstruction of justice, and, if found guilty, should do jail time. But I’m under no illusions any of that is likely to take place. There’s one law for the Clintons and another for you and me.

The whole story reminds me of the old joke about why you shouldn’t mud-wrestle with a pig.