Political Wrinkles - No One Should Be Above the Law

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No One Should Be Above the Law

No One Should Be Above the Law | The National Interest Blog

Quote:

In what appears to be continuing trend, the Federal Bureau of Investigations recently confirmed that the status of America’s powerful elite as being accountable only to their own standard while the rest of the nation is required to follow rule of law. The latest evidence was the FBI’s decision not to recommend charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for violating U.S. Code in the handling of classified information. Attorney General Loretta Lynch made it official the next day: she said the “year-long investigation [will] be closed and . . . no charges be brought.”

In a lengthy statement explaining the decision, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that Secretary Clinton had unequivocally violated a federal statute in the storage and communication of classified material via unclassified and unauthorized email messages, including “seven e-mail chains [which] concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent.” A total of 110 email messages contained highly classified information and another two thousand unmarked messages were determined after the fact to contain classified information.

The other recent example of a public figure getting off virtually scot-free was former General and CIA Director David H. Petraeus. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was not jailed. The Associated Press reported that Petraeus “admitted that he loaned his biographer, Paula Broadwell, with whom he was having an affair, eight binders containing highly classified information regarding war strategy, intelligence capabilities and identities of covert officers,” some of which was classified Top Secret.

It is clear, however, that neither Clinton nor Petraeus will be held to account for violating federal law. Petraeus is still one of the most sought-after, highly paid public speakers and Clinton might be elected commander in chief four months from now. Very few other Americans, however, enjoy such lenient treatment for similar violations of the law.

Last November, a Marine reservist, Major Jason Brezler was forced out of the Marines by acting Assistant Navy Secretary Scott Lutterloh, for mishandling classified material. In 2012 Major Brezler sent classified information via email to fellow Marines, warning that a certain Afghan official living on a U.S. base had been sexually abusing little boys and was a security threat. His warning was ignored, and subsequently one of the abused boys went on a shooting rampage, murdering three U.S. Marines on the base.

For his attempt to protect American lives, Major Brezler was stripped of his security clearance and discharged from the Marines.

Despite the fact Major Brezler’s motivation was to protect American lives, Secretary Lutterloh apparently felt the law didn’t allow for personal exceptions. For General Petraeus and Secretary of State Clinton, however, the laws were deemed optional. Simply being a high profile figure with political stature apparently gives violators a free pass in our judicial system.

No one is supposed to be above the law.

Separate legal standards for the elite and the rest of the nation continue the degradation of the confidence rank-and-file Americans have in the nation’s senior leaders. For years now the level of voter’s trust in the government has been dropping precipitously. I’ve seen firsthand this abuse of power go unpunished and observed its consequences.

In 2011, during my second tour of Afghanistan, I witnessed the dramatic gulf between what our senior civilian and uniformed leaders were telling Americans and the truth of what was really happening on the ground. Civilian leaders, such as then-Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy and military leaders such as former three-star General Curtis Scaparrotti (then deputy commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan), claimed their policies and plans were succeeding.

And, if clinton wins in Nov. it will only get worse, and I do not expect the republicans to do anything about it if they stay in control of congress. :mad:mad:mad