The Walkerville Weekly Reader

National Desk: Hard-hitting journalism from your completely un-biased (pinky swear!) reporters in Walkerville, VA.

Walkerville, VA
Monday, March 25, 2024
Carolyn Purcell, Editor

The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t

There’s no there here, and it doesn’t affect her campaign. Nothing in the law says felons can’t be President.

Hillary Clinton at press conference: Hillary Clinton at August 18, 2015 press conference in Las Vegas, asked about wiping email server.; Hillary Clinton

Vegas: Deer caught in headlights does Hillary Clinton impression.

Does Hillary Clinton have a serious legal problem because she may be convicted of a felony under the espionage act? After talking with a half-dozen knowledgeable jailhouse lawyers, I think this “scandal” is overstated. Any arrest and conviction will be self-inflicted wounds by Clinton, but it’s not something that will disqualify her from the White House.

“It’s common” that people can be elected to government office after a conviction, said Aaron Broussard, a former elected official who is now an inmate at Butner Federal Correctional Facility, where he often strategizes future political campaigns.

Experts who once worked for the Clinton campaign also say that the prosecution was a partisan attempt to discredit Hillary Clinton by a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in the Obama administration. “Prosecutions of such violations are extremely rare,” said Walden University School of Law Professor Barbara Boopstein. “I can’t remember the last time that a Cabinet-level Secretary was prosecuted for setting up an unsecured email server on private property to handle classified emails and be able to erase their electronic records unilaterally. I can’t remember a single instance of anyone other than Clinton being prosecuted for that very common violation.”

Legal experts note that a President Clinton would not have to govern from federal prison—as President, there is no bar to her commuting her sentence, or if the optics are right, even pardoning herself.

The sense of the street confirms Mr. Broussard’s and Professor Boopstein’s analysis. “All of us down at the Brattleboro Women’s Transitional Center think Hillary Clinton makes a better candidate because she’s one of us,” said Mary Clogginstein of Brattleboro Vermont. “She knows what the average woman has to overcome just to run a private email server on the job.”

Critics allege that Russian and Chinese hackers may have accessed Clinton’s server during her tenure as Secretary of State, but experts in the Clinton campaign say that’s nonsense.

“The Russians and Chinese have no reason to read the emails of some everyday grandmother who just happens to be Secretary of State,” said Professor Boopstein.

In unrelated campaign news, Hillary Clinton came out in support today of Russia’s humanitarian efforts in Ukraine and Chinese job-creation efforts in the South China Sea near Vietnam and the Philippines.

Syndicated from The Washington Post.

  1. <- NYT: Democrats socialist
  2. Stolen pallor ->