The Clintons have to be used to this by now. They have a history of such flagrant contempt for the legal system that in 2000 every Supreme Court justice skipped Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address, an unprecedented boycott that hasn’t been repeated since. Still, the email scandal is hitting Hillary in the only place where it hurts: her poll numbers. And now a federal judge is joining the list of people who don’t trust the Democratic inevitable:
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, known for his blunt manner, said he simply did not understand why the State Department has dragged its feet on responses for emails in requests to the Freedom of Information Act.
“Now, any person should be able to review that in one day — one day,” the judge said, examining a request for just over 60 emails. “Even the least ambitious bureaucrat could do this.”
Leon articulated what has been a major concern of State Department critics who contend that the agency is dragging out responses to FOIA requests to protect Clinton, who served as secretary of state during Obama’s first term. The judge’s complaints echoed those of Hill Republicans, who have accused the agency of slow-walking document requests in its Benghazi investigation to protect Clinton.
The Benghazi investigators are still waiting for two key email chains between Clinton and top henchmen Jake Sullivan, Cheryl Mills, and Philippe Reines, which mention the talking points circulated to former UN ambassador Susan Rice after the Libya attack. There’s also a glaring two-month gap in the released emails spanning the period from May to June 2012, during which violence was escalating in Libya. Trey Gowdy has seemed uncharacteristically patient in the face of Clintonian stonewalling, but he must be at least as exasperated as Leon by this point.
This isn’t the first time Obama’s executive branch has tried to bottleneck documents it doesn’t want to turn over. The Most Transparent Administration in History, as it was nicknamed back during the heady 2008 days of Doris Kearns Goodwin-fueled preemptive hagiography, has set a new record for censoring and denying access to FOIA-requested materials. Astonishingly, the government acknowledges that documents have been refused improperly in nearly one out of three cases. The State Department providing cover for the next Democratic presidential nominee is easy spadework at this point.
Part of the problem is that Clinton and her aides have made extensive use of personal email addresses for government matters. Remember, this isn’t a case of garden-variety corruption. Former federal archivist Jason Baron told the New York Times back in March: “I can recall no instance in my time at the National Archives when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business.”
Another first for the Clintons—and now they’re obstructing the investigation. Stare out the window for long enough and it starts to feel like Travelgate, Filegate, Troopergate, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, furniture stolen from the White House, all over again.
Is that really what voters want for 2016?
AP
