WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton has yet to face accountability for allegedly jeopardizing national security with a private email server that she used as secretary of state, which the FBI called “extremely careless.”
Nor has she been investigated for her involvement in Uranium One, a deal arbitrated during her tenure in the State Department that allowed Russia to acquire 20 percent of America’s uranium reserves.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigation into the Clintons during his confirmation hearing, pledging he would not seek to prosecute “political enemies.”
He said he would refuse a request from President Trump to go after Clinton with a special prosecutor, something Trump promised to do.
But the Justice Department may ultimately appoint a special counsel to investigate, after all.
While Sessions indicated while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday that he is not prepared to establish a special counsel to examine the Clinton Foundation, he has directed senior federal prosecutors to examine whether a special counsel should be appointed to probe the “unlawful” Clinton Foundation dealings and the Obama-era uranium deal, according to a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee.
The prosecutors would determine whether “any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources” and their findings would go directly to Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
While news organizations such as the Washington Post have report extensively on allegations Trump campaign collusion with Russia, the paper’s editorial board insisted there are “no grounds for a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough commended Sessions for suggesting during his testimony that the appointment of a special counsel to probe the 2010 uranium deal is unlikely.
“We had an attorney general that stepped up and looked like he was not going to allow a president or Republicans in Congress turn this Justice Department into some device for a tyrannical, autocrat in the making,” Scarborough said Wednesday.
That the Justice Department is investigating Clinton’s alleged corruption is a sign America is turning into Russia, CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin argued.
“You know, I don’t want to be Chicken Little but this is what happens in authoritarian countries like Turkey and Russia. When a party takes power, they start criminally investigating their opponents. That’s what this is, if it happens,” Toobin said.
A “politically motivated investigation of a president’s political opponent” would only be interpreted “purely as revenge” for the ongoing probe into whether Trump colluded with Russia to hack the 2016 presidential election against Clinton, according to the New York Times.
ABC, CBS and NBC downplayed and ignored the latest revelations over the Clinton Foundation’s financial dealings with Russia, spending more time on the health benefits of walking, neo-Nazi rallies and the “sports equinox,” Newsbusters reports.
MSNBC host Katy Tur gloated on Wednesday that the media deliberately ignored the Uranium One story and argued that Trump’s focus on the issue is a “desperate” attempt to deflect attention away from the Russia probe.
“Donald Trump brought up Uranium One and his ilk brought up Uranium One during the campaign and it was shot down so many times by me and other reporters in our own reporting. And then it went dark,” Tur said. “They didn’t really bring it up again until recently. It goes to show you how desperate they’ve become to push back on the special counsel in the Russia investigation and what has been coming out and dripping out from that.”
Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman sat down for an interview with Clinton published Wednesday, claiming “President Trump is trying to flip the script” by calling for a special counsel to investigate her.
Echoing the sentiment of many of her cohorts in the media, Clinton argued that appointing a special counsel to investigate her ties to the uranium deal would be an abuse of power, transforming the United States into an “authoritarian regime.”
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“If they send a signal that we’re going to be like some dictatorship, like some authoritarian regime, where political opponents are going to be unfairly, fraudulently investigated, that rips at the fabric of the contract we have, that we can trust our justice system,” she said.
“It will be incredibly demoralizing to people who have served at the Justice Department, under both Republicans and Democrats, because they know better. But it will also send a terrible signal to our country and the world that somehow we are giving up on the kind of values that we used to live by and we used to promote worldwide.
President Trump has repeatedly called for the Justice Department to investigate “Crooked Hillary” and the Clinton Foundation.
Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Republicans have been pressing the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate all the alleged scandals surrounding Clinton, including the Clinton Foundation, the “Trump dossier” that she helped paid for, the FBI’s handling of the investigation into her email use and the Uranium One deal.
But Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a member of the House Judiciary Committee, argued Wednesday that the truth about Clinton’s malfeasance can be brought to light without a special counsel.
Clinton’s shady dealings warrant investigation but do not cross the threshold of tapping a special counsel, Gowdy told Fox News Wednesday.
“The threshold, is there a conflict of interest? And is it in the interest of justice to go pick someone who is not even part of the system right now to investigate something? I don’t think it’s been met yet,” Gowdy said. “I think this is a really important point. You can investigate something without special counsel.
“In fact, 99.9 percent of all investigations in this country are by the women and men at the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and none of them is called special counsel. So there is a threshold that has to be met, and I don’t think it has been met. To say we’re not going to appoint a special counsel is not to say we’re not going to look into something.”
