Tag Archives: Wikileaks

Clinton Corruption Remedy: Keep Her Out

07 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Corruption, statism

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Would I ever vote for Donald Trump? I’ve been critical of Trump’s positions on foreign trade, immigration policy and eminent domain. I think he’s an extremely risky candidate for any supporter of small government. But I’ve been much more critical of Hillary Clinton: she is a statist through and through, and she so often finds herself in close proximity to corruption and some other highly suspicious circumstances. I consider myself a libertarian, and I like Gary Johnson. Unfortunately, Johnson has disappointed me with his selection of Bill Weld as a running mate, his goofs on foreign policy and his often poor presentation of libertarian principles.

FBI Director James Comey has again concluded that there was no intent on Clinton’s part to violate national security with her private email server, but he also concluded that she was reckless in conducting sensitive government business, including the transmission of classified information, on that server. Unfortunately, Comey limited his investigation to the period during which she was Secretary of State. The server, however, was put in place before she was confirmed by Congress. The question of intent makes that time period relevant, but Comey ignored it. She broke the law concerning the handling of classified documents, there is no question about that. No less than five of Clinton’s aides took the Fifth Amendment to avoid prosecution. Evidently, Mr. Comey has been under pressure from a highly-politicized Justice Department. There are other investigations underway at the FBI and by Congress involving the Clintons, however.

The deluge of information via Wikileaks over the past month reflects horribly on the Clintons. I don’t care whether the leaks came from government sources, the Russians, or from other foreign actors. No one has challenged the authenticity of these leaks. Again, Hillary Clinton compromised national security by conducting her duties as Secretary of State on a private computer server. That’s what got her into the email mess. Now, we’ve learned that she gave her housekeeper access to her computer to print documents! At least five foreign intelligence services hacked into that server. Clinton also obstructed justice on the matter by destroying evidence and perjuring herself before Congress.

Wikileaks has shed additional light on the Clinton Foundation as well. The foundation functions as a money laundering scheme intended to disguise influence-buying as charitable giving, with the Clinton’s and their cronies as the real beneficiaries. Foreign governments, including several middle eastern powers, funneled money to the foundation while Hillary served as Secretary of State. Here’s Deroy Murdock on the Foundation:

“… its 2014 IRS filings show that it spent a whopping 5.76 percent of its funds on actual charitable activities — far below the 65 percent that the Better Business Bureau calls kosher. That paltry figure also mocks Hillary’s Las Vegas lie, uttered at the final presidential debate on October 19: ‘We at the Clinton Foundation spend 90 percent — 90 percent of all the money that is donated on behalf of programs of people around the world and in our own country.’ The Clinton Slush Fund . . . uh . . . Foundation seems to be mainly a travel and full-employment program for Hillary’s government in waiting. It’s also a bribe pump that sucks in money and spews out favors.“

The Clintons also have had strong ties to individuals with criminal histories, such as the notorious child predator Jeffrey Epstein. And Hillary Clinton’s reputation for contemptuous behavior toward others was so strong that State Department security personnel requested reassignment. It’s been reported that members of her Secret Service detail called her plane “Broomstick One“.

A Hillary Clinton victory in the president election will not end the investigations. Congressional leaders such as Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy have vowed to press on aggressively, given that Clinton lied before their committees and to the American people about the existence of classified emails on her server. Impeachment by the House might occur, though Clinton’s offenses have occurred prior to her term in office, and the Senate would never attain the two-thirds majority necessary to convict.

It is possible that the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation will be damaging, but it is unlikely to bring an indictment. The DOJ under Clinton would be headed by Loretta Lynch or some other Hillary/Obama sycophant. There will be no DOJ indictment or special prosecutor as long as the Attorney General reports to the criminal herself. (The FBI cannot indict; it can only recommend indictment.) There would hardly be a real opportunity to render justice to Hillary at the federal level.

A local jurisdiction could bring an indictment for criminal activity. The Anthony Weiner laptop investigation by the NYPD could be troublesome for Clinton, depending on the extent to which any Clinton dealings with Jeffrey Epstein were recorded there.

There remains only one sure constitutional remedy for Hillary Clinton’s corruption: Tuesday’s election. Preventing her from taking office must be priority one. Hillary Clinton’s days of insider dealing would then be over, as would the politicized government created by Barack Obama, who was just recorded encouraging illegal aliens to vote! But Gary Johnson obviously won’t beat Clinton… the only real option is Donald Trump.

Yes, Trump is risky, and I’ll have plenty to criticize on my blog if he takes office. He is plainspoken but sometimes crude and offensive. Naturally, that “style” is especially offensive to the tender snowflakes who cling to identity politics, but I do not believe Trump is a racist. It’s true, I don’t know exactly what we’d get with Trump. I suspect he has some statist tendencies of his own, but I prefer that risk to the corruption and certain statism of Hillary Clinton.

So I must vote for Donald Trump. Putting Hillary Clinton in the White House would compromise our system of government. She is an accomplished grafter and cronyist, expert at leveraging her position of power for personal enrichment, and she is prone to taking retribution against enemies. The IRS, the DOJ and other agencies have already become partisan organizations under Obama. And as I mentioned earlier, Clinton is a statist who desires centralized power. That is always dangerous.

Read this excellent essay: “The Case Against Hillary Clinton“, by Lisa Schiffren of the Independent Women’s Forum.

Here is a page with a number of past posts about Hillary Clinton on Sacred Cow Chips.

Hillary’s “Fix”: Obamacare Squared

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Obamacare

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One of Hillary Clinton’s “public positions” is that Obamacare needs a few “fixes”, a considerable understatement. Meanwhile, Wikileaks has revealed that she has “privately” rooted for the failure of Obamacare. For that reason, Bill Clinton’s recent slip-up, in which he portrayed Obamacare as a “crazy” system, had a certain Freudian quality. Indeed, Obamacare looks crazier every year, especially in the middle of premium-hike season.

One of Hillary’s so-called “fixes” is the creation of a “public option”, or health insurance offered by the government to compete on exchanges with private insurance. Private health insurers, with the expiration of the so-called “risk corridors”, do not have continuing access to the public purse to cover their losses; going forward, they must price coverage at rates covering the cost of their respective risk pools. The government, on the other hand, is likely to have pricing flexibility. If exercised, there will be little hope for private insurers to “compete” without bailout money. Health insurance coverage, then, is likely to devolve into a single-payer monopoly, and control over health care delivery will be increasingly monopolized as well.

Sally Pipes says the “public option” is a politically attractive way to make a single-payer system inevitable:

“But progressives face the same problem pushing single-payer they always have — the public won’t stand for it. So they’re dusting off an old idea that will get them to single-payer without using those words.“

So the path from Obamacare to a single-payer system is likely to involve a public option in one form or another. John C. Goodman points out that expanding Medicaid is one way to create a broad public option. Medicaid reimbursement rates are low, however, which is why many doctors refuse to accept patients with Medicaid coverage. Such might be the quality of future coverage under an “affordable” public option. And if Medicaid is enhanced so as to appeal to middle class families, it will be correspondingly more expensive. But for whom? More than likely, the tab will be paid by a combination of insureds and taxpayers. And more than likely, the number of competing Medicaid plans (most of which are now privately offered and managed (e.g., Centene Corporation)) will dwindle.

Christopher Jacobs says that when Obamacare became law, health insurers had every expectation that they’d be bailed out by the government indefinitely. Continuing reimbursement for losses was never guaranteed, however. The pressure to backstop the insurers’ profitability will be stronger as the debate over “fixing” Obamacare advances. But as Jacobs warns, ongoing bailouts mean that these insurers are essentially controlled by the government. The private insurers would essentially become heavily-regulated entities managing the operational details of a de facto single-payer system.

So, there are three distinct possibilities under a Hillary Clinton presidency, assuming she can get any of them though Congress: 1) a public option with no private bailouts; 2) a public option with ongoing bailouts; and 3) no public option with ongoing bailouts. Ultimately, all of these scenarios are likely to devolve toward a de facto single-payer system. So we will have monopoly, central control of health care, and/or bailouts. Who was it that said government is the way we wreck things together?

Hillary has some other “fixes” in mind. Some of these involve more regulation of coverage and pricing, such as mandatory provision of three free “sick” visits with a provider each year and in-network pricing for emergency procedures. These steps will add to the cost burden on private insurers.

Regulating drug companies more heavily is another favorite Hillary Clinton theme, but regulation is perhaps the primary reason why the drug development process is so lengthy and costly. The theory that government will be more effective at negotiating drug prices than insurers is suspect. Outright price regulation is likely to mean reduced availability of various medicines. Patent reform and an expedited drug approval process would be a more effective approach to reducing drug prices.

Clinton has also proposed a tax credit for out-of-pocket health care costs exceeding 5% of income. We’ll need higher tax rates, lower deductions and credits elsewhere, or higher deficits to pay for this one.

Finally, Hillary wants to expand eligibility for Medicare to anyone 55 and older, but as Goodman explains, the kind of Medicare Advantage plans that would be made available to “near seniors” under this proposal are similar to those already offered by private insurers, and at lower cost, and premia for these plans are often payable with pre-tax dollars, or the buyers may be eligible for tax subsidies. This proposal might sound appealing, but it is unlikely to accomplish anything except to create more administrative overhead, regulation and diminish existing offerings.

Obamacare has injected a high degree of central planning into the health care system with disastrous results. It has fallen far short of its own objectives for reducing the number of uninsured, “bending the cost curve” downward, and avoiding disruptions to existing coverage and patient-doctor relationships. Choices have narrowed in terms of coverage options and within networks. Obamacare has imposed unnecessary costs on providers and encouraged a monopolization of health care delivery, hardly a prescription for affordability. And Obamacare has proven to be a budget buster, contrary to the advance hype from its proponents.

I remember standing in a pharmacy shortly after Obamacare was enacted, and I heard a sharp-voiced leftist telling a clerk that Obamacare was just a bridge to single-payer health care. I tried to mind my own business, thinking it unproductive to engage such an individual in public. This fellow was quite pleased with the clever deception that was Obamacare. It was never a secret that the progressive left hoped single-payer would be the ultimate outcome, but it’s interesting to witness their discomfort with the way things are unfolding. Surely they must have known that if “fixes” were necessary, something would have to be broken. Perhaps they thought the politics would get simpler, but the shortcomings of the health care law have inflicted too much pain and shame.

I’m tempted to say that the health care system can be improved only by doing precisely the opposite of everything Clinton has proposed. There’s some truth in that, but it’s not quite that simple. The path to better and more affordable health care is to end the dominant role of third-party payers, placing responsibility on price-sensitive consumers, allowing a variety of choices in coverage, ending tax preferences, reducing regulation and encouraging real competition in the markets for coverage and medical care. Reform of the patent system could introduce more competition to markets for pharmaceuticals. The Medicaid system will have to be relied upon to cover those who otherwise can’t be insured at affordable rates. Proposals for federal funding of Medicaid through block grants to the states is an avenue for achieving greater efficiency and better health care outcomes.

Hillary Clinton’s “fixes” are all likely to exacerbate the worst failings of Obamacare for consumer-patients and taxpayers. More federal spending commitments will not solve the structural problems embedded in the health care law. It will magnify them. The hope among the progressive left remains that single-payer health care will evolve out of the Obamacare system once it is “fixed”. And what will we get? More complete monopolies in coverage and care, higher prices, central regulation, narrowed choice, waiting lists, denial of care, and some combination of higher taxes and deficits. In other words, a more radical version of Obamacare.

A Land Under The Rule of Hillary

20 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in Corruption

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I just had to laugh when I saw a progressive cite “the rule of law” as a compelling reason to vote for Hillary Clinton. First, while she might not be a policy clone of Barack Obama, you can bet that she’ll take a similarly dismissive view of Constitutional principles, subjugating our governing framework to her own brand of executive authority whenever and wherever possible. The rule of law hasn’t stopped the Clintons from proving their cronyist bona fides, using positions of power to reward friends, foundation contributors, and to accumulate personal wealth. The Clinton’s are inveterate liars, having misled the American public on numerous occasions, as well as Congress. In 1996, New York Times writer William Safire called Hillary Clinton a “congenital liar“. The Clinton’s are also vindictive: they have done their level best to destroy the reputations of various enemies over the years, and there is widespread suspicion that much dirtier deeds have been perpetrated in order to protect their interests.

Foundation of Graft

I quote here the opening paragraph of a July post on Sacred Cow Chips entitled “Clinton Foundation Domain of Darkness“:

“Hillary Clinton provides a fascinating case study in the art of graft, and the Clinton Foundation provides her with brilliant cover. The foundation masquerades as a legitimate charity, avoids taxes, and it provides a vehicle for what’s known as ‘pay-to-play’ influence-buying. It appears that Bill Clinton made a lucrative career of this while his wife was serving in public office. It was a sensitive issue when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, given the potential for compromising national objectives. It is still sensitive in view of the many gifts to the Clinton Foundation provided by foreign entities, not to mention the handsome speaking fees paid by foreign entities to the Clintons.“

Now we know, thanks to Wikileaks, that certain Clinton Foundation (CF) contributors and “Friends of Bill” (FOBs) were given priority access to Hillary Clinton and other senior State Department officials.

The next few paragraphs contain information described more fully at the first link above. The first point is the Clinton’s cozy relationship with Russian interests. CF accepted contributions from individuals hoping to arrange a large deal giving Uranium One, a Russian company, control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the U.S., a deal that Hillary Clinton’s State Department had to approve. Sounds like pay-for-play to me!

Also noteworthy is the relationship between CF and Laureate International Universities and Walden University Online, which have been accused of scamming earnest students. CF received substantial donations from Laureate‘s chairman, and Bill Clinton received millions as honorary chancellor of Laureate. In turn, Laureate received millions in State Department grants.

The devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 provided another avenue through which the Clinton’s were able to enrich their cronies. The complicated web of relationships included CF ties to organizations that received State Department funding. Here is Dinesh D’Souza:

“… a number of companies that received contracts in Haiti happened to be entities that made large donations to the Clinton Foundation. The Haitian contracts appeared less tailored to the needs of Haiti than to the needs of the companies that were performing the services. In sum, Haitian deals appeared to be a quid pro quo for filling the coffers of the Clintons.“

Gifts from foreign governments to CF are clearly red flags of potential influence buying. Many of the donors were Middle Eastern governments eager to acquire weapons from the U.S.  Hillary Clinton’s State Department, once again, was in a position to help them. Via Wikileaks, we know that Clinton’s campaign has been accepting contributions from lobbyists representing these governments. The Huffington Post‘s Senior Politics Editor, Sam Stein, says that Qatar’s $1 million birthday gift to Bill Clinton “confirms sort of the worst portraits of the Clintons and how they operated out of office.” What other favors could a Clinton presidency make possible?

As a charity, CF performs poorly, with less than 6% of its 2014 spending going to actual charitable causes, contrary to Hillary Clinton’s claims that 90% went to charity. The last link provides the following quote from The Federalist regarding historical totals from CF:

“The Clinton Foundation’s three largest charitable ‘program service accomplishments,’ according to its tax reports, are the Clinton Global Initiative ($23.2 million), the Clinton Presidential Library ($12.3 million), and the Clinton Climate Initiative ($8.3 million).”

The article also quotes Ira Magaziner, once among the top executives at CF:

“This is not charity. The whole thing is bankable. It’s a commercial proposition.”

The Vengeful Touch

The Clinton’s have a reputation for being vindictive and for being fairly ruthless in dealing with those who cross them. Here is a story on a Clinton request to discredit Congressman Trey Gowdy, who was looking into her deleted emails:

“Jennifer Palmieri, director of communications for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, wrote an e-mail to staff where she says, ‘HRC asked me what offense we could do today to set up Gowdy for Face The Nation tomorrow.’“

This story about a detailed list of Hillary Clinton’s enemies is instructive. Apparently, Claire McCaskill and John Kerry were at the top of the list after the 2008 presidential campaign.

Hillary is also known to be extremely ill-tempered. Check out this account of Hillary Clinton’s post-townhall tirade against moderator Matt Lauer, according to a female NBC producer and a cameraman. Hillary was enraged because Lauer had asked a pointed question about her private email server and her handling of classified documents, a question that did not appear on the pre-approved list provided to her in advance of the townhall. She threw a profanity-laced tantrum upon leaving the stage, according to these accounts. She promised to have Lauer fired threw a glass of water into the face of an assistant, and finally delivered an arguably racist insult to DNC Chair Donna Brazile’s face.

There are many accounts of Hillary Clinton’s abusive behavior toward staff, both at the White House during her tenure as First Lady and later at the State Department. Here is the latest, from an FBI summary of an interview with one of its own security officials:

“CLINTON’s treatment of the DS [diplomatic security] agents assigned to protect her was so contemptuous that many of them sought reassignment or employment elsewhere. …by the end of CLINTON’s tenure, [her protective detail] was staffed largely with new agents because it was difficult to find senior agents willing to work for her.”

The FBI’s summary of the interview also describes Clinton’s routine violation of standard security protocols.

It’s long been rumored that the Clinton’s have dealt quite harshly with enemies who pose legal threats. The number of mysterious deaths of individuals who were apparently dangerous to the Clintons could be a series of strange coincidences. However, the laws of probability don’t provide strong support for that theory. Perhaps many of the deceased individuals were involved in other dangerous activities, but that would not reflect well on the Clintons, either. There are web sites that keep track of the Clinton “body count”. Left-leaning sites such as Snopes.com routinely label that scorekeeping as pure speculation and false, but often do so even before investigations are complete. Three recent deaths, discussed here, involved individuals believed to have information damaging to the DNC and/or the Clintons.

Security and the Email Imbroglio

Hillary Clinton’s careless and criminal email practices should convince any American that she is unfit for the job of President. Her efforts to obstruct the investigation into those practices are nothing short of spectacular, and are themselves worthy of prosecution. It’s even more appalling and corrupt that she has Obama’s Justice Department and FBI Director James Comey in the tank, so prosecution is unlikely to proceed without extraordinary developments. Fortunately, Wikileaks and FOIA requests have uncovered some of the deleted emails. It’s also clear that the FBI is in a state of internal revolt over the questionable handling of the email investigation and Comey’s ultimate refusal to recommend prosecution. The revolt could lead to additional revelations having major consequences for Clinton, Comey and others inside the government.

Austin Bay condenses Clinton’s email scandal into a “Three-Headed Crime” and highlights the bastardized way in which Comey managed to compromise his agency:

  • The Server Head: the “rogue email server … that she controlled. … designed to evade laws regulating the retention of government documents and thus evade scrutiny and accountability.“
  • The Loose Lips Head: “Hillary used her off-the-books and non-secure server system to transmit and analyze classified national security information ….“
  • The Nixon Head: “Hillary and her aides tried to hide evidence the rogue server existed and evidence they routinely mishandled of classified information.“

The email scandal came to light as a result of the Administration’s response to the terrorist attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Here is Bay:

“The House of Representatives began investigating the Benghazi attack and questioning the Obama Administration’s Great Benghazi Lie. Testimony wasn’t the only issue. The House had subpoena power. Providing inquisitive representatives and senators with Hillary’s Benghazi-related communications would expose the rogue email operation. Better start destroying evidence.“

Bay notes that even Jonathan Turley, who had originally defended Comey’s decision not to refer the email case for prosecution, changed his mind as more details came to light. Apparently, the revelation that the Justice Department gave “immunity to the parties on both ends of those communications” struck Turley as a tactic wholly unsuitable for a serious investigation. He doesn’t quite say that Comey or the DOJ were acting on Hillary’s behalf, but the case certainly gives that appearance.

The Press In Her Pocket

My attempt to get a fix on the suspicious history and current state of the Clinton’s and their gang of operatives relies, to some extent, on nontraditional news sources. The mainstream media is willing to ignore Hillary Clinton’s many transgressions, with almost no mention of the latest Wikileaks dumps, FBI document releases, and other documented Clinton indiscretions. Kimberley Strassel is correct in saying that this is in no small part Donald Trump’s fault, as he manages to create a circus of distractions on an almost daily basis. Here is her conclusion:

“Mrs. Clinton has been exposed to have no core, to be someone who constantly changes her position to maximize political gain. Leaked speeches prove that she has two positions (public and private) on banks; two positions on the wealthy; two positions on borders; two positions on energy. Her team had endless discussions about what positions she should adopt to appease ‘the Red Army’—i.e. ‘the base of the Democratic Party.’

Voters might not know any of this, because while both presidential candidates have plenty to answer for, the press has focused solely on taking out Mr. Trump. And the press is doing a diligent job of it.“

It’s ironic that the press takes so little interest in the Clinton misadventures. Or rather, the truth is that many in the press intentionally omit reporting of these issues. That helps to maintain a solid base of low-information voters in Hillary’s thrall, under the misapprehension that she has any respect for the rule of law.

Hillary’s (C)mail Fail

13 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in National Security, Privilege

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Hillary Clinton’s classified email scandal might look like a minor distraction once facts about the suspicious dealings of the Clinton Foundation are unraveled. I’ll cover the foundation later this week. In this post, I’ll review some considerations relevant to the email case. This is the second in a three-part series of posts on Hillary’s more recent foibles, following the first installment on her role in the Benghazi disaster.

Hillary Clinton’s “grossly negligent” misuse of classified email during her tenure as Secretary of State was harshly criticized by FBI Director James Comey last week. Nevertheless, the Bureau declined to recommend an indictment to the Department of Justice (DOJ) based on their inability to prove mens rea, or any awareness of guilt or an intent to do harm. It is doubtful that Clinton had any intent to harm the country. At a minimum, however, Comey’s statements implied that she did not take security seriously.

The basis of any claim that Clinton lacked awareness of her security responsibilities is shaky, to say the least. Clinton’s private email stunt was a willful effort to avoid legitimate scrutiny, such as FOIA requests. The IT expert who set up her private servers and other devices pled the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination! There have been reports that Clinton asked aides to remove classified markings (also see here). All we have from the State Department on that allegation is a denial. Clinton repeatedly lied to the public and to Congress (under oath) about classified material and the number of devices she used. She also lied to a federal judge (under oath) about having turned over all work-related emails to the State Department. Many of those emails were deleted, leaving suspicious gaps in the pattern of traffic. Indeed, Clinton’s actions in the case give every appearance of an effort to obstruct justice.

Some of the missing emails will come to light. Wikileaks has released a trove of Clinton’s emails showing additional classified material. There are also pending civil cases related to the emails in which the plaintiffs wish to subpoena Mrs. Clinton. Needless to say, her lawyers are making every effort to stop the subpoenas.

Jacob Sullum at Reason discusses Comey’s decision in the context of mens rea. He notes that Clinton’s offenses were certainly prosecutable under the letter of the law. Despite denials from Clinton apologists, the case of a Navy operations specialist in 1992 is instructive. The defendant in that case claimed that willingness to mishandle classified information was not sufficient for a conviction, but the military court disagreed under the same provision of the law referenced by Comey:

“… the court turned to the subsection at issue in Mrs. Clinton’s case: ‘Section 793(f) has an even lower threshold, punishing loss of classified materials through ‘gross negligence’ and punishing failing to promptly report a loss of classified materials.’”

Nevertheless, Sullum thinks Comey’s defense of mens rea protections for individuals accused of certain violations of law is admirable, and I agree (except Comey’s second clause in the quote below, regarding “in that statute in particular“, is not strictly true). The explosion of federal law, especially regulatory law, makes this more crucial than ever from a libertarian perspective. Here is Comey:

“‘The protection we have as Americans is that the government in general, and in that statute in particular, has to prove before [it] can prosecute any of us that we did this thing that’s forbidden by the law, and when we did it, we knew we were doing something that was unlawful. We don’t have to know the code number, but [the government must show] that we knew we were doing something that was unlawful.’“

For background on the issue of a defendant’s willingness to violate the law, Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation has a great article called  “Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse But It Is In Reality“. By that title, Rosenzweig means that there are so many federal crimes today that ignorance of the law very often should be a valid excuse. However, the contention that Hillary Clinton was ignorant of the law regarding her duties in handling classified information is dubious at best.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s interview with the FBI just days before Comey’s announcement was not conducted by Comey, was not made under oath, and was not recorded. That leaves significant doubt about the seriousness of the FBI’s effort to learn the truth about the record, or any contradictions in the record, that might shed light on Clinton’s awareness or intent to violate the law. And Attorney General Loretta Lynch, after a “personal” meeting with Bill Clinton, recused herself and her office from prosecutorial duties prior to Comey’s announcement, stating that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation without examining the case. That step casts doubt on her seriousness as an independent prosecutor. Hillary skates, for now.