Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano thinks there is a very good chance the Hillary Clinton email investigation will be reopened because the latest FBI document dump made it clear that “the case is stronger than ever.”
On Sunday, while many Americans were focused on football and the Golden Globe Awards, the FBI quietly released 300 pages of emails related to its investigation of Clinton. According to Fox News, it is “the fifth release of Clinton investigation documents on the FBI Vault website” and is “related to the handling of computer hardware collected from Clinton’s lawyers for the investigation.”
The emails also expose embarrassing disagreements between the FBI and the State Department over how many of Clinton’s personal emails should be classified.
In one April 27, 2015 email, an FBI official wrote to other officials that they were “about to get drug into an issue on classification” of Clinton’s emails. The official, whose name is redacted, said that the State Department was “forum shopping,” or seeking a favorable opinion on the classification issue by asking different officials to rate emails as unclassified.
While this may seem like old news, according to Napolitano, it is not.
“Those emails were taken from the server of a non-government person to whom Mrs. Clinton sent them. And they all contained confidential or secret material — material the United States government wants to keep secret and that Mrs. Clinton swore an oath to keep secret. The person to whom she sent them was hacked by Russian and Chinese and Israeli intelligence agents,” he said, relying on “sources” for that last bit of information.
In FBI notes released last year, the bureau stated: “The FBI did find that hostile foreign actors successfully gained access to the personal email accounts of individuals with whom Clinton was in regular contact and, in doing so, obtained emails sent to or receive by Clinton on her personal account.”
Says Napolitano:
Last Sunday’s revelations make the case against Clinton far more serious than Comey presented it to be last summer. Indeed, Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been nominated by Trump to be attorney general and who has been a harsh critic of Clinton’s, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that he would step aside from any further investigation of Clinton, thereby acknowledging that the investigation will probably be opened again.
One of the metrics that the DOJ examines in deciding whether to prosecute is an analysis of harm caused by the potential defendant. I have examined the newly released emails, and the state secrets have been whited out. Yet it is clear from the FBI analysis of them that real secrets were exposed by the nation’s chief diplomat — meaning she violated an agreement she signed right after she took office, in which she essentially promised that she would not do what she eventually did.
The essence of the American justice system is the rule of law. The rule of law means that no one is beneath the law’s protections or above its obligations.
Should Clinton skate free so the Trump administration can turn the page? Should the new DOJ be compassionate toward Clinton because of her humiliating election loss and likely retirement from public life? Of course not. She should be prosecuted as would anyone else who let loose secrets to our enemies and then lied about it.
As for the fact that Sessions promised he would recuse himself from any upcoming Hillary investigation at his confirmation hearing, Napolitano says he was “telegraphing to the legal and judicial and law enforcement agencies that the investigation will be reopened again.”
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