Largest Wisconsin Newspaper Attacks Clinton Before Primary

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel unleashed a devastating attack on Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton over her record against transparency in government. This issue goes far beyond the current email scandal, to Clinton’s dealings in Arkansas before her husband ran for president.

The Journal Sentinel zeroed in on public transparency in its attack on Clinton:

Her horrible track record on transparency raises serious concerns for open government under a Clinton administration — so serious we believe they may disqualify her from public office. We hope Wisconsin voters give this issue the consideration it deserves when they go to the polls on Tuesday.

The Wisconsin paper went on to briefly explain the email scandal, and urged the Obama administration to not interfere if the FBI uncovers gross violations of security law on Clinton’s part.

The issue immediately at hand — and under investigation by the FBI — is Clinton’s use of a private email server for State Department communications. Clinton may have violated national security laws by making top secret documents vulnerable to hackers and available to people without proper security clearance. Violating those laws rightly ended the public service career of Gen. David Petraeus when he was President Barack Obama’s CIA director. The FBI and Justice Department must be free to fully investigate and, if warranted, prosecute Clinton in this matter without any political interference from the Obama administration.

“No president, no secretary of state, no public official at any level is above the law,” the Journal Sentinel’s editors wrote. They added that the likely reason Clinton kept a private email server was to hide information from the public.

This fits the woman’s checkered past, and the Journal Sentinel proceeds to explain five examples of when Clinton hid information from the public, as documented by ProPublica. These include Clinton’s incredible 10,000 percent return on a shady investment — hidden from the public eye during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential race — and the shady dealings of the Clinton Foundation when Hillary was secretary of state. ProPublica did not even mention the terror incident in Benghazi, Libya, which Clinton’s State Department tried to cover up by blaming it on a video.

Republicans and Democrats in Wisconsin vote next Tuesday, and the race is close between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Sanders leads, but not by much. Ted Cruz has climbed to a 10-point lead over Donald Trump on the Republican side, with John Kasich nearly ten points behind the real estate tycoon.

Despite Wisconsin’s track record of voting for Democrats, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel seems to have a moderate Republican leaning. It endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential primary, and earlier this week it endorsed John Kasich. In 2012, the newspaper supported Scott Walker against the effort to recall the sitting governor, who won that recall election by a larger margin than his original gubernatorial victory. Walker went on to endorse Ted Cruz this week.

Wisconsin will likely favor the underdogs in the Republican and Democratic races next week: Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. While this will help the two candidates, they both face a difficult road ahead, as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have large leads in their respective delegate counts. Cruz can barely afford to lose a single state until the convention, while Sanders has a little more wiggle room, but not much.