The Foggy Bottom of Clinton’s Muddy Waters

Editor’s note: this is one of the longest essays I’ve written in quite some time and owing entirely to the convoluted nature of the material involved as well as mainstream media’s open attempts to suppress or ignore the issue completely; it’s going to require you to bear with me for a little bit as I set the stage. I’m frankly not sure this piece will make anyone particularly happy, but if you manage to fight your way through the piles of bullshit I had to expose just to explain the Clinton email server scandal – you will have a better grasp on what can only be described as a complicated secret a great number of influential elites are trying to keep from you for the purposes of influencing an election that’s collectively worth a staggering amount of goddamn money to them.

As always feel free, even encouraged to source the information in this article by clicking on the links scattered throughout and a special thanks to my friend Tom at Politics N Pop for badgering me to keep digging past the now obviously orchestrated attempts to obfuscate the truth behind this story.

 

Clinton Corruption Puts Trump on Deck

Welcome to the bowels of hell my friends, for that is surely where those of us who have no desire to see Donald Trump become President of the most powerful nation on earth stand at this very moment.

You may, for the time being assume that I’m being hyperbolic if you like; but that isn’t going to do either one of us any fucking good when Trump absolutely destroys the least trusted American politician since Richard Nixon at the polls in November. We are close now, closer indeed than I literally ever thought even possible in this election cycle to seeing a narcissistic, emotionally unstable and openly mendacious, quasi-fascist billionaire winning the highest office in the land  – by fucking default.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you have by now already taken a look at the State Department Inspector General’s report about Hillary Clinton’s private email server. While at this point you can find any number of reasonably critical examinations of the report and what it means all around the internet; I’m of the opinion that if you really want to understand why we’re so utterly fucked now – you have to read the actual report (at the bottom) itself, which is unfortunately eighty-three pages long. If nothing else, the tone and language of the official document alone should make it exceptionally clear to you that something very, very bad is about to happen to Mrs Clinton and her campaign.

The simple truth is that Clinton is guilty, just as she has always been guilty and the only goddamn reason you haven’t heard about it is because mainstream, neoliberal media is both too fucking lazy to read documentation and too committed to the Imperialist cause – they’ve openly been campaigning for Hillary since at least last summer. There has literally never been any question of Clinton’s guilt in the mind of any neutral observer who’s actually read about the details involved in the case so far; the only real question has been “will President Obama risk his legacy by protecting Hillary from his own Attorney General?”

With the release of the State Department OIG report, it seems fairly safe to say that the answer to this question is “sweet fuck, no!” More importantly however, anyone with a functioning brain who has actually read the report now knows with absolute certainty that Clinton is guilty unless their entire news feed comes from Clinton SuperPACs and/or David Brock – something that I guarantee you is not true of either the FBI or President Obama; both of whom are about to be faced with some very exciting or very difficult choices respectively.

In light of this, I’m not going to waste any more time trying to explain the goddamn score to people who simply do not want to believe that Clinton is in enough serious legal trouble that she is virtually certain to lose this fall against Donald Trump and the Republicans – pretty much regardless of what she does from here.

Instead, I’d like to take a look back at how we got to this point and focus a little bit on why everything has broken so perfectly for a potential Trump presidency that’s going to keep me up at night for months between now and fucking November. Strap on your crash helmets kids, this is going to get extremely frustrating and utterly terrifying in very short order.

 

Two Tribes

In order to truly understand why the fallout from Clinton’s email scandal is and will continue to be utterly catastrophic for the Democratic Party in this election, it first becomes necessary to explore some of the actors involved and aspects of the political situation in Washington at this moment – or frankly, whenever you have a president from one party surrounded by a government utterly dominated by the other.

The Capitol and by extension the government, is currently in a perpetual state of silent war; as both parties and numerous camps within those parties jockey for advantage and influence before a staggeringly goddamn corrupt contest for all the marbles in the Fall. This close to pitched battle, there will be no compromises and no negotiations now – in fact, it is highly unlikely that the two parties are even conversing with one another; at least openly. Communication between these great warring factions will now be reduced entirely to off the record, unrecorded telephone calls and when anyone really wants to turn up the pressure – they’ll leak a tiny bit of incriminating evidence out to the public through a completely complicit press corps. The context here is extremely important to understand, because it is into this highly politicized environment of constant, shadowy warfare between opposing party politicians and mandarins alike, that the so-called “Clinton Email Scandal” has exploded like a devastating cruise missile.

Once you’ve taken that climate of political “cold” warfare into account; the first thing you need to know is that there is absolutely no such goddamn thing as an independent investigative body inside the US government right now and that includes both the FBI and the State Department Investigator General.

The FBI is, like virtually every single fucking organization infested with law enforcement officers – a primarily Republican-controlled body. The current head of the FBI, James Comey is also a Republican and in fact served as the United States Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush; keep that in mind by the way, it’ll come up later when we’re taking at look at the lose-lose choice facing President Obama and current Attorney General, Loretta Lynch.

Additionally of course, the Bureau is a department of the United States government that currently has a sitting Republican Congress, so the simple truth is that the GOP controls how much money it gets each year and not President Obama. While Comey himself has shown a willingness to cross the partisan line and see that justice is done in the past, it’s extremely important that you remember precisely who pays the FBI’s bills: a raving pack of incompetent, bigoted fundamentalist pricks who wouldn’t blink a fucking eyelash at framing Clinton for murder to win this election, the Republican Party.

In turn, the Inspector General’s Office is part of the US State Department under John Kerry and the Inspector General himself, Steve A. Linick was appointed to his post by President Obama directly. To say that Linick’s reputation for the investigation of fraud is impeccable would frankly be a significant understatement; Steve has been part of numerous, prestigious government investigative bodies looking into financial fraud/oversight, residential mortgage-backed securities and the US military operation against ISIS in Iraq. He even served as the Deputy Chief for the Justice Department’s Fraud Division a few years prior to his appointment at the State Department. While Linick’s private political affiliations are somewhat unclear, who’s side he’s on is under absolutely no such shroud of mystery – he serves at the behest of John Kerry and President Obama, two of the most powerful members of the current government and the Democratic Party.

The second thing you need to know is that GOP Congressman and Draco Malfoy look-alike Trey Gowdy is quite possibly one of the most partisan, mendacious and utterly fucking incompetent government officials to ever grace the halls of power in America – and that, my friends, is saying something for a country that elected Andrew fucking Jackson to be president. In fact, it’s pretty much fair to say that virtually everyone involved in the thrice-cursed debacle that is the Benghazi investigation literally doesn’t know their own ass from their elbow.

This matters a lot to the Clinton email server scandal because the private server was actually discovered as part of the horrifically stained and embarrassing Benghazi hearings and many of the documents we’ve seen dribble out of the investigation have been the result of lunatic right wing nutjob websites suing the government for more information. Think of it as kind of like being Hitler’s kid; the Clinton email scandal was born out of an episode so embarrassing to the American public that they’d literally been trying to block the memory out of their minds – simply put, nobody and I mean fucking nobody wanted to hear any more shit about Hillary Clinton, Libya and by extension her goddamn emails.

 

Comey’s White Whale

Once you understand the key contextual points above it becomes a lot easier to comprehend the timeline and the actions of those involved in the Clinton email server scandal.

The simple damn truth is that James Comey himself probably didn’t want anything to do with Trey Gowdy’s smoking crater of failure and when he was initially ordered to investigate the situation, he clearly assumed this was just another GOP witch hunt that would end in defeat and embarrassment for everyone involved. Although evidence exists that the neutrality of Comey’s investigation was of the utmost importance to the government, the Agency itself went out of its way to clarify that it wasn’t targeting Clinton – which isn’t something an FBI investigator who thinks he’s got what would arguably be the biggest goddamn scandal in US political history on his hands would imply quite frankly.

Things would of course become entirely different almost immediately once the FBI actually started its investigation. As Comey’s boys got a hold of the physical server and started discovering the offsite backups, investigators would have become almost immediately aware of the fact that they were dealing with something very serious and potentially disastrous to the US government. Although it is virtually impossible to say for sure how many of Clinton’s deleted personal emails the Bureau has recovered, knowing that they have access to the hardware and have discovered cloud backups makes it a pretty good guess that they probably have all of the deleted emails at their disposal by now. I don’t know James Comey personally, but I’ve read enough about him to know that he’s not a slack-jawed, incompetent fucking moron like Gowdy. Once Comey realized that Clinton was guilty, he undoubtedly set his mind to proving it beyond the tiniest fraction of a doubt – at least in part because Comey had worked on the largely unsuccessful Whitewater investigation back in the day and he’d seen first hand exactly how slippery Clinton could be if you didn’t have everything lined up just perfectly.

Although it’s popular among left-leaning thinkers to dismiss the entire Whitewater scandal as a bunch of Republican nonsense, the fact that multiple people (including Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker) went to jail over it, makes it clear that isn’t entirely the case. Regardless of whether he was right or not, Comey deeply believed that the Clintons had repeatedly and willfully obstructed investigation into their affairs – he even went so far as to call it “a highly improper pattern of deliberate misconduct.” In other words, while Comey seems highly scrupulous for a Republican, he’s intimately aware of the stunning, even criminal lengths the former Secretary of State will go to keep her (potentially criminal) offenses secret. While again, I’m only speculating here, it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if Comey saw the Clinton email server investigation as an unexpected and highly fortuitous “second crack” at defeating one of the most dishonest, elusive and corrupt politicians in US history – once it was clear that she was almost certainly guilty of some form of criminal misconduct that is.

 

President Obama & the Paper Note War

This brings us back to the ongoing, open political conflict in Washington that is the upcoming Presidential election. Regardless of what people think about the personal relationship between Obama and his former Secretary of State, the president and the establishment wing of his party genuinely began the nomination process fully behind Hillary Clinton’s run for president. Many Sanders supporters who read that sentence will no doubt angrily retort that Obama hasn’t actually endorsed Clinton; but that’s probably because unlike Democratic Party superdelgates, he realizes just how unseemly it would look for him to officially throw his support behind any candidate before the people have spoken. The fact is, Obama either believed Hillary was innocent at the start of this process, or he just didn’t care because he considered the offense itself incredibly minor – he even went so far as to say “I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America’s national security” when discussing the scandal during a Fox News interview; although a short time later White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was forced to remind reporters that the President was expressing an opinion and had purposely remained outside of the investigation to avoid influencing the results.

While this a perfectly reasonable position for a sitting President dealing with a scandal inside his own party, the clarification provided by Earnest goes a long way towards confirming reports that Comey has played the entire Clinton email server investigation extremely close to the vest – neglecting to inform even the President of the FBI’s progress and findings.

This of course brings up an interesting question, namely – “why?” Is it simply a matter of extreme professionalism? It could be, but it’s hard to imagine that Comey would give the email server scandal so much of his “close” personal attention if it truly was a “nothingburger” procedural violation as so many Clinton SuperPAC writers have claimed; especially in light of clearly more pressing concerns the Bureau has dealt with during that time. Furthermore, if this is all sizzle and no steak, why exactly is it taking so long? Sure, it takes a while to read through up to sixty thousand emails and at least some of that time was spend recovering Clinton’s deleted and supposedly “personal” emails; but there’s no way in hell it takes anywhere from 12-20 full time FBI agents a full eight months and counting to read through even a massive stack of emails about fucking yoga class and communications from Hillary’s husband Bill that the former President curiously denies sending.

In light of the available evidence, I feel that leaves only two logical reasons for Comey’s secrecy:

• The FBI and Comey are actively stalling or at least taking their sweet old time for political purposes
• Comey thinks he’s finally got Hillary Clinton right in his sights and he’s keeping Obama in the dark to prevent the President from helping her escape this time

Frankly, this isn’t necessarily an either/or situation and the number of political variables involved here are kind of staggering.

First and foremost, the FBI itself can’t actually indict Clinton; ultimately the decision to indict resides with the Attorney General’s Office and since Loretta Lynch works directly for President Obama, you can pretty much guarantee he’s going to make the final call on this one – if only because of the staggering political ramifications involved for his party. So that’s that right? Obama gets to decide if she’ll be indicted and the President has already said he doesn’t think she endangered national security (despite knowing virtually nothing we don’t already know about the case) so she’ll walk won’t she?

Not so fast, the GOP Benghazi Commission’s discovery of the private server triggered a State Department investigation that probably started out as a blase, fairly partisan affair designed to protect Clinton from yet another extraneous Republican interrogation. Unfortunately for the Democrats however, the department soon became overwhelmed with the sheer volume of work and as we now know – a very serious and thorough Inspector General’s investigation by Steve Linick. This then forced the administration to refer the case to the Department of Justice, which in turn brought the FBI on board as part of fairly standard procedure for an investigation that was made exceptional only by the fame and importance of one person involved; Hillary Clinton. This not only put the investigation directly into James Comey’s lap, but it also gave the Bureau the right to recommend that the Attorney General (who again, works directly for President Obama) indict Clinton.

Unfortunately, the FBI’s recommendation to indict would not be binding or a matter of public record, which brings us back to square one in theory – hoping that President Obama does the right thing when presented with evidence of Clinton’s criminal behavior, lies and repeated failure to cooperate with investigators; despite the fact that it would be disastrous for his party. Except, someone (hint either the FBI itself or the GOP from an FBI source) leaked information to a number of conservative websites and commentators that Comey (and possibly additional agents) would be prepared to resign in protest and/or leak details of the case if the administration chose it ignore his recommendation or stall the indictment until after the election. Furthermore, despite the less than credible sources involved there’s actually a pretty damn good chance Comey’s resignation threat is real – in 2004, Comey and a number of officials in the Bush Justice Department threatened to resign over the President’s executive order allowing NSA wiretaps that weren’t even close to legal at the goddamn time; an act President Obama actually praised him for when announcing his appointment as head of the FBI. This experience actually adds even further to the FBI director’s leverage against potential attempts to block or delay an indictment by the administration because Comey was acting as Deputy Attorney General at the time and would presumably have a fairly intimate understanding of current AG Loretta Lynch’s duties and responsibilities; although I should probably mention that James signed off on mutherfucking waterboarding at the time – even if only to remind readers who should be arrested for human rights violations and/or war crimes once America is no longer run by criminals, murders and liars.

Even this threat however, was probably not enough to force the President’s hand; after all the FBI and by extension Comey are currently suffering from what could be politely described as a massive credibility problem. Additionally someone (read people inside the administration loyal to Clinton) tried to throw water on the growing fire by counter-leaking that the Bureau was about to wrap up it’s “review” and had found no criminal wrongdoing; something that certainly doesn’t jibe with Comey’s steadfast insistence that the Bureau is conducting an official investigation of Clinton only a few days later and his frequent statements that there is no established deadline for concluding that investigation. These numerous scandals added incentive for Comey to delay the FBI investigation process because early on (especially during the expensive and embarrassing San Bernardino terrorism/I Phone debacle) there was a non-zero percent chance that the American public would respond to his resignation threat with a hearty “don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out James!” Stalling the investigation however would not only give the Bureau more time to expand it’s case against Clinton, but increase Comey’s political capital for a potential fight with Obama over if and when Lynch will indict Hillary and numerous assistants still close to her this day.

 

Friendly Fire

Which of course, brings us all the way back to the beginning and the State Department Inspector General’s report – I swear we’re not going in circles here folks, just bear with me a little longer. The OIG report is extremely important in this case for three reasons besides the fact that it basically called Clinton a liar, told the entire world that she never had permission from the State Department to use a private server and confirmed that there were at least some hacking attempts made on said server; once again in complete contradiction to Hillary Clinton’s many, extremely public claims otherwise:

1. Assuming previous statements by James Comey and the White House Press Secretary are true, the OIG report represents President Obama’s first chance to study what kind of case the FBI will be able to make against Clinton. Since keeping the President in the dark was clearly part of Comey’s strategy, there’s a pretty good chance Obama’s opinion of the case was entirely formed by combining the initial portions of the State Department’s email probe, developing information from Linick and quite frankly – Hillary goddamn Clinton’s solemn but apparently worthless promise that she’d done nothing seriously wrong. How happy was the President when he found out Hillary was lying to him about virtually everything, including the “personal” nature of at least some of the 30,000 emails she deleted? I really couldn’t say definitively, but I somehow doubt tersely ending a press conference in Japan in response to a question about the email server scandal in the wake of the OIG report, while adding “I think these (questions) are better directed to the campaign,” is a particularly good sign for Clinton; especially coming from the normally calm, deliberate and calculating Obama. Furthermore, I feel it’s fairly reasonable to assume that the President could have, if he had so desired, exerted considerable control over the tone, language and detail level of the report. Clearly, he did not as Linick lays into Clinton like she fucking stole something repeatedly and at considerable length.
2. The OIG report also represents the absolute first time that Clinton’s actions, excuses and obfuscation have been actively called out by an official body that isn’t at least nominally Republican; the server was discovered by the GOP controlled Benghazi Commission and the current investigation is being run by the Republican head of the FBI. Owing entirely to the GOP’s shameful politics and behavior during Obama’s Presidency; virtually any accusation levied against Clinton by tendrils of the Republican Party will immediately be perceived as a partisan smear job and largely ignored by seriously people – the President included. The fact that such a damning report has now come out of Obama’s own State Department; despite the presence of one of the most powerful and decidedly mainstream figures in the Party (John Kerry) is an extremely strong signal that all is most certainly not fucking well in Camelot. Clearly, the Hillary Clinton email server scandal can no longer be described as a “vast, right wing conspiracy” to get the former Secretary of State because she’s now being harshly criticized by powerful Democrats; which knocks out another key aspect of Clinton’s defense.
3. Finally, the report revealed that numerous high-level members of Clinton’s staff were absolutely aware of the potential legal problems and department rules violations involved with Clinton’s private server; again directly contradicting numerous public claims otherwise by Hillary herself. In one case an Information Resources Management staffer told superiors that Hillary’s emails could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved to satisfy record keeping rules, only to be told the server had already been approved by the legal staff and that “the matter was not to be discussed any further.” Another staffer reports that after raising questions about the server, the director of the department told the entire staff “never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.” Additionally, even Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills is implicated in the report when she suggested that a separate stand-alone computer could be used to keep Clinton’s insecure Blackberry out of secure areas; an idea the OIG report claims was never acted on despite the approval of another senior official. This is of course telling because it proves Clinton was aware that the Blackberry she was normally receiving emails on wasn’t considered secure enough for the kind of emails she was clearly exchanging and frankly just didn’t give a shit – which is a very goddamn serious blow to her claims that she was unaware she was doing anything wrong. Actually, the OIG report even lays out a clear motive for Clinton’s behavior when it reveals that her right hand woman, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin directly suggested that Clinton should either get on the State email system or give the department her email address. Clinton replied “let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible,” a clear indication that the former Secretary of State acted with both intent and purpose to hide her emails from government record keeping.

Still unconvinced? How about when I remind you that Clinton has been openly dishonest if not outright lying about former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s email use and the similarities to her situation? Powell had a phone line installed in his office solely to link to his private account, which he generally used for non-classified communications. The General’s classified communications were conducted almost entirely on paper or through a secure State Department computer at his desk specifically reserved for this purpose. Naturally, Powell absolutely did not have his own unapproved, insecure and apparently illegal private server – nor did he give a completely unauthorized, non-government official access to all his classified documents simply by having that person administer the server itself.

What about when I tell you that Hillary Clinton received and even exchanged numerous emails containing clearly sensitive information from personal friend Sid Blumenthal; a man who President Obama had actively blocked from joining the State Department and instead had gone to work for the Clinton Foundation? Much of this information was quite obviously unsuitable for sharing along insecure channels, either from or to Blumenthal’s email box; including how to respond to allegations of torture by the CIA, French intelligence motivations for the nation’s involvement in the Libya campaign and most disturbingly, the real name of an American operative in the region! Although Clinton has previously alleged that the correspondence from Blumenthal was unsolicited, additional emails that Clinton originally tried to hide have since made it clear that advice from her long time ally was both welcome and occasionally acted on. I probably don’t have to remind you that Blumenthal absolutely does not have the clearance for the discussions in these emails and it doesn’t matter that he sent most of the messages to Clinton because they can still be captured by hackers at either end – something one Romanian hacker claims he accomplished multiple times, with ease. He’s currently here in the United States by the way after accepting a mysterious plea bargain arrangement in exchange for his cooperating in an as of yet unrevealed matter that is almost fucking certainly the Clinton email server investigation.

This is all of course in addition to the fact that Clinton has been caught on multiple occasions lying about having released all of the emails and lying about whether or not those emails contained classified information.  She also (falsely?) classified 30,000+ emails on her unauthorized, insecure private sever as “personal” and deleted them despite a court order to turn all emails over to investigators. Fuck, even the poor stiffs running Clinton’s offsite storage backup started to suspect Hillary was trying to “cover up some shady shit” when she order the servers wiped with only a 30 day backup.  Nor can you forget that the guy who set up Clinton’s server, Bryan Pagliano, has been granted full immunity and is currently cooperating with the FBI; which really doesn’t make a whole lot of fucking sense unless he has something important to tell Comey about how Hillary Clinton used and stored email. Grab a seat sport, I’m not done yet.

Would it shock you to learn that a group of respected former American Intelligence professionals have released a letter urging President Obama to “expedite the FBI review of former Secretary of State Clinton’s alleged email security violations so the public can assess this issue in a timely fashion” – due to what they describe as “real concerns” and “enough evidence” to “permit a preliminary damage assessment?” May I also remind you that Clinton literally never even activated her official State Department email and continues to claim that she never knowingly sent classified information through her insecure, private server – which means Hillary wants you to believe she’s dumb enough to think you can be in charge of the diplomatic corps and aspects of foreign policy for four fucking years without ever having to send a classified email. It gets better my friends, because among the emails recovered from Clinton’s server were clear instructions for an aide to remove classified markings from a talking points memo and send it by regular email – definitively showing that Hillary was at least generally aware of how classified emails worked within the system despite Clinton’s absurd “lack of awareness” excuse.

Is the problem perhaps that you’re still swayed by numerous claims that Hillary Clinton didn’t actually break any laws?  Let me first start by saying that this is complete and utter hogwash, at a very minimum Clinton broke the Classified Information NDA she signed upon taking office when she failed to ask anyone if the (at least) 22 highly classified emails she sent required secure transmission – a fact that actually represents a key portion of her defense up to this point, because if she’d have asked anyone with the proper experience, Clinton would have immediately been informed that the documents were classified and couldn’t be shared on her server. Hey folks, I’m not a goddamn lawyer, but if I were Mrs Clinton I’d be pretty worried about the part that says “may result in the termination of any security clearances I hold; removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances” and the seven sections of three separate Federal acts she might have just broken.

Furthermore, are you aware that Hillary Clinton could be prosecuted in federal court just for failing to tell President Obama about her unauthorized server? That particular offense could result in a prison sentence as long as 10 years if it can be proven Clinton was either criminally negligent (seems pretty easy frankly) or knew that she was sending classified information over a non-government, insecure server and failed to tell her superior, President Obama – all of which seem pretty much objectively fucking true at this point.  Again, this is all somehow assuming her paper thin defense of not having a good goddamn clue what her job was the entire time she was doing it holds up; which it probably won’t because there’s evidence she did understand the classification procedures – during exchanges with both Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan. Hey, did I mention that there’s a recording of Clinton attacking the Bush administration for shredding our constitution with “secret White House email accounts” yet? I imagine that will make quite the impression on the FBI, Attorney General and/or a federal judge after Hillary’s impassioned protestations that she had absolutely no idea that using her own private server to avoid turning over uncomfortable emails for public scrutiny through the Freedom of Information Act was somehow wrong.

Finally, do you realize that eventually the FBI or the Attorney General will be able to compel Clinton and her aides to testify like they refused to do for the OIG report? You can lie on the news and during interviews without penalty, even in the face of clear evidence that proves you’re lying. You can hire a mendacious boot-licker like Peter Daou to repeat your deceptions far and wide on SuperPAC funded websites without technically breaking the law. Make no mistake however, when the FBI asks Clinton and her aides to tell them who knew what, when and what was said about the matter at hand, they will be compelled to the tell the truth or risk utter ruin and additional charges. Every single answer, given by every single member of Clinton’s inner circle and the former Secretary of State herself will be scrutinized and compared against each other for inconsistencies and deceptions. Hillary will not be able to lie away her clear and obvious knowledge of what she’s doing in this environment because to do so would be the equivalent of perjury and she’ll go immediately to jail. Frankly, this is pretty much a done fucking deal my friends – either she’ll admit that she knew she was exposing classified materials to sources without proper clearance and be charged under the espionage act, or she’d lie about it and be charged with perjury once the AG enters in the evidence that Clinton knew she was potentially sending classified materials.

Oh, by the way – I haven’t even fucking mentioned what happens if any of those 30,000 some odd deleted “personal” emails involve the Clinton Foundation and even so much as hint at a quid pro quo bribing scheme; the short answer is Racketeering charges are absolutely not a fucking joke and all it takes is one email, or even a pattern of contact surrounding donations and Clinton’s decisions as Secretary of State to literally end her career immediately.

In short, unless President Obama decides to take a massive shit on his legacy by preemptively pardoning Clinton almost immediately, Hillary will be indicted by the Attorney General’s office at some point and unless he wants to deal with a leaked FBI report along with a metric fuckton of very public resignations – it will happen before the election. Figuring out precisely when however, takes a little bit more work still.

 

Trump Ascendant

First and foremost, it must be understood in no uncertain terms that there is no goddamn way in hell Hillary Clinton can successfully run for President while being indicted and the fact that she seems to think this is actually fucking possible is the first real sign I’ve seen that she may be literally batshit, whooping at the moon insane instead of just a compulsively secretive, slightly paranoid sociopath. Why? Well, when you’re running for President of the United States, you will be constantly followed around by slavering packs of ravenous journalists. Those wretched, ink-stained belligerents will, every single day, ask Mrs. Clinton about the status of and latest developments in her email server indictment. In reply, Clinton will have to repeatedly remind the reporters (and anyone watching at home) that she can’t talk about the case at all, because she’s under federal indictment. Do you think Clinton’s poll numbers are shit now?! Can you possibly fucking imagine what they’d be like after a mere two weeks and a few hundred repetitions of “I can’t answer that question because my own government thinks I’m a crook” – good god man, she could hit negative fucking digits here; Clinton would literally be less popular than herpes by the end of September.

If we’re being objective, the prospects for Clinton running after receiving a preemptive, protective pardon from President Obama are only slightly better – the reporters are still going to ask her about the case every day, but at least she can pretend she was innocent and the full Presidential pardon was a mere formality to protect national security. How much luck she’ll have with that in the face of possible FBI leaks and a Republican Party out for blood doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me however. The simple truth is that if you had to be pardoned, you were probably guilty and after all of the lies Clinton has told America about her email server, that’s almost certainly enough to finish her even against a nightmare candidate like Trump.

Frankly, either one of those scenarios would be just fucking peachy as far as the GOP, Donald Trump and the FBI are concerned; especially if we assume that Comey is purposely dragging out the FBI investigation to some degree. Am I entirely sure the FBI director is doing so? Of course not, but there is a certain sort of funny logic at play here that would make waiting until late August, or even early September highly favorable for the Republican Party; which again is extremely well represented in the Bureau and remains the party of choice for Comey himself. At some point, and it’s difficult to say precisely when because as far as I know this has never happened in US history before, but at some point – it will be virtually impossible for the Democrats to replace Hillary Clinton’s name on the ballot all over the country in the Fall election. You can pretty much bet your bottom fucking dollar that Republican lawyers will absolutely not allow the Democrats to count a vote for Clinton as a vote for someone like Biden or Kerry; they’ll fight that shit tooth and nail in court and at the end of the day, the sons of bitches will win that case. This leaves the prospect of trying to win a write in campaign on two or less months notice with a neoliberal stiff the American people have probably rejected at least once already; right, good fucking luck Sparky.

In short, one of the ways the Democratic Party can ensure that Trump wins in November is to simply shove it’s collective cranium up it’s own, voluminous ass and just pretend the American people will elect Hillary even if she’s guilty because Trump is alien to them and they don’t understand his voters. I’d estimate there’s about a 25% chance of the situation breaking out this way but I might be giving mainstream Democrats too much credit.

This brings us to the second and perhaps most important reason this scandal is playing out in slow motion; because the mainstream elements of both parties are completely fucking terrified of and diametrically opposed to seeing Bernie Sanders become President of the United States.

For the Republicans the logic here is pretty simple – Sanders will come after their big money donors, prosecute all of their rich friends, including some members of the GOP itself and directly attack the party’s attempts to roll back Civil Rights legislation by pushing an agenda of bigotry. Furthermore, Republicans can read mutherfucking polls too; they realize their chances of beating a wounded, potentially even crippled Clinton are far, far better than their odds of actually beating Sanders in the general election with Trump. When you combine this tactical (and completely rational) fear of Bernie with the numerous, already discussed advantages of having the FBI play it’s hand out nice and slow; it becomes incredibly obvious that the Republicans won’t make a move on Clinton as long as Bernie is still in the race.

So, if the Republicans actually want to drag this mess out into the general election and it would be suicidal to simply run Clinton anyways (even after a pardon) why in the name of fucking christ hasn’t Obama just ordered Lynch to indict Hillary himself? Simple, the Democrats are also rich, corrupt and selfish assholes who are terrified Bernie Sanders will come after their big money donors and end the Citizen’s United/global corporation dollars gravy train.

Take a moment to watch and listen to the way mainstream Democrats like Barbara Boxer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Barney Frank talk about Sanders and his supporters. Think back for a second at all of the horrible lies, smears and blatantly dishonest attacks the neoliberal media and Clinton SuperPAC AstroTurf websites have been allowed to print in the name of destroying Bernie Sanders and discrediting the (often young) socialists who support him. Just stop and ask yourself exactly how fucking terrified you must be to literally fix the nomination process for a candidate who started the bloody race metaphoric light-years ahead of Sanders. Do these people seem like they’re simply engaging in the political fucking process to you? This isn’t about the Fall election right now and frankly it isn’t really about the nomination anymore my friends – this is a goddamn class war that’s broken out while everyone was busy waving campaign signs and trying to understand delegate rules.

The plain, simple and utterly heartbreaking truth my friends is that these people would rather see fucking Donald Trump win, than risk having to be responsible for their actions, pay their fair share of taxes and actually respect the will of the people under Sanders. After all, it won’t be their fucking kids who get deported or shipped off to a Muslim refugee vetting camp and they’ve got more than enough money to buy themselves a nice, fat cushion against the casual misogyny, bigotry and open white supremacy a Trump Presidency will no doubt inspire in America. Bottom line, the lives of establishment Dem pols, party insider mandarins and all their fabulously rich/famous friends would change a lot fucking less under Trump than Sanders; because they’d get to keep the vast majority of their wealth, power and privilege. If push came to shove and the only two choices really were nominate Sanders or accept President Trump, everything we objectively know about the mainstream wing of the Democratic Party says they’ll let Trump win – no matter how impossible that may be to accept for someone who isn’t a neoliberal and still has a soul. Once you understand that wealthy Democrats would rather choke to death in a septic pit than nominate Bernie Sanders, it becomes exceptionally obvious that Obama will not order Lynch to indict Clinton until after she’s won the nomination at the Democratic National Convention on the weekend of July 25th.

 

The Narrow Path Out of Hell

Over the course of my life, I’ve tried to make at least a minimal, at times even half-assed effort to find the bright side of even horrifyingly bad situations. The truth here however, is that I’m not really sure how much of a bright side there really is. Based entirely on the Democratic Party’s staggering ability to habitually claim defeat from the jaws of victory and the fact that virtually everyone in the party seems to believe if they keep repeating “Hillary did nothing wrong” often enough, it will eventually become true – I’d say the odds are very heavily slanted towards a reasonable if not particularly inspiring victory for President Fuckface Von Clownstick this Fall.

There is however, one tiny sliver of silver-haired hope left in the war to stop the rise of American fascism and Donald Trump. Of course the sequence of events required to put him in the race would be both literally absurd and as far as I know, utterly unprecedented in American political history – but even that somehow seems more realistic than expecting a bunch of wealthy, corrupt and privileged neoliberals to vote against their own economic interests and political power base. Frankly kids, we are simply running out of fucking time to change enough minds about socialism before November. This, in my humble opinion is what the only path away from President Trump at this point probably looks like:

• The party allows/insists that Clinton go to the Convention at the end of July and using the anti-democratic power of superdelegates, gives Clinton the nomination. While at this point, a huge number of people involved would know that Clinton would not be the candidate going into the Fall, nobody could realistically stop her from winning the National Convention as long as all the rich delegates continued to vote in their own self interest
• Shortly after Clinton wins the nomination (and I honestly mean a matter of days, because time is precious here) the State Department will leak one of Clinton’s emails the public hasn’t seen yet; nothing too damning, but something significant enough to create plausible deniability when she announces that she’s stepping down for the good of the party because of the ongoing investigation/Republican witch hunt.
• Once Clinton steps down, the Democratic Party will hold some kind of national emergency conference during which a process that can be easily rigged in favor of neoliberal elites can be installed to help “choose” the new nominee; possibly even something absurd like only letting superdelegates vote just to piss in socialism’s eye while they have the chance. This nomination will of course be fixed against Bernie Sanders and if the Democratic Party still has even a few functioning brain cells left (jury is out on this) it will be rigged in favor of current VP Joe Biden.
• Although I can hear people howling about Joe also losing to Trump now, the simple truth is that absolutely will not happen. Although the reality is that Biden isn’t a particularly effective legislator and he may genuinely be as dumb as a bag of wood chips; his gaffes and foibles have somehow managed to create a groundswell of positive feelings toward Biden in parts of America where other mainstream neoliberals don’t. He’s not going to dominate in these demographics, but the fact that people simply like him allows him to draw extra votes from groups that wouldn’t be accessible to Clinton or John Kerry for example. Groups like – moderate Republicans in the American south, young people pretty much all over the country and people who still remember Biden’s impassioned interview that literally forced President Obama to speed up the same-sex marriage rights timeline, but aren’t old enough to remember that Uncle Joe utterly failed to defend Anita Hill or properly investigate her likely abuser, current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas back in the day. Furthermore, while it may be somewhat heartless of me to come right out and say this, it won’t change the fact that America as a whole has grown much closer to Joe Biden since we saw him lose and mourn for his own son – again.
• Almost immediately after fixing the emergency conference to force Biden through, the neoliberal machine will turn towards the VP spot and offer policy platform concessions to progressives who are likely to still be very angry/bitter about the Party’s absolute refusal to just nominate Sanders and kick Trump’s ass in up to 40 states. To be entirely fair, there is a more than reasonable chance that these concessions will be in something resembling good faith. It seems highly unlikely that Biden would be a particularly active or domineering president and quite frankly unless rich Democrats are prepared to give a little bit on this front, it would be almost impossible for them to recapture enough of the socialist vote to make any of this fucking worth doing.
• I’m a little torn on this choice because while I absolutely recognize that Elizabeth Warren would probably better serve a progressive agenda by forming a new kind of Democratic linchpin in the Senate; the simple truth is she’s one of a very small list of people who would conceivably placate socialist anger enough in the VP role to make them hold their noses and vote for Biden in November. She’s also likely to be far more agreeable to older, neoliberal feminists who’re also going to be pretty upset their candidate doesn’t get to be President. Finally, the truth is that while I like Warren and I genuinely feel she’ll push progressive issues forward no matter what position she holds in government after this election,  she’s simply more prepared to compromise with neoliberals than say Tulsi Gabbard or Nina Turner. Considering his recent and somewhat inspiring turn towards calling out Democratic Party fuckery this primary season, Van Jones would not look entirely out of place in the VP role either but it would be wise for the party to avoid more centrist candidates like Cory Booker and completely bypass any old white dudes who don’t really bring anything extra to the table that Joe doesn’t already cover. I’d suggest Sanders of course but not only would that still be too radical an option for the mainstream wing of the party, but by this point I’d firmly expect Bernie to tell the DNC to go fuck itself if they even asked. Maybe they could ask Jill Stein?
• Once the Democratic Party has installed Biden/Progressive VP, the timeline becomes a little more fluid since Obama can wait until he knows the FBI recommendation to indict is actually coming before pardoning Clinton and encouraging to her to take a multi-year vacation far away from cameras and/or questions. Chances are, the GOP will respond to the Democrats “hail Mary” by telling Comey to issue his recommendation quickly – in the hopes of filling the news with bad optics to blunt what will no doubt be a ridiculous amount of chatter about this new and arguably completely insane strategy the Democrats have adopted. All Obama has to do is sign the pardon before Comey can make it to the AG’s office with his recommendation and the Clinton email server scandal literally vanishes before it can do any real harm.
• Biden then goes on to beat Trump (although not necessarily by a large margin) in November; since I firmly believe that any warm-blooded, non-pardoned human who can fucking dress themselves and isn’t currently under indictment by the FBI will beat Trump in the general election this fall. The whole world breathes a deep sigh of relief and socialists everywhere start getting ready for 2018 when we’re going to Primary every fucking one of these neoliberal bastards and ensure this shit never happens again.

 

Will the Democratic Party backup plan I’ve described here actually happen? Your guess is as good as mine, frankly there’s still a large part of me that firmly expects these assclowns to drive the bus right off the fucking cliff shouting “I’m with her” even as they sink beneath the waves. What I do know is that there is no goddamn way Hillary Clinton can win the election unless it turns out Trump is an actual fucking child molester or something; which frankly wouldn’t be all that out of character for a powerful GOP politician apparently. Sadly, I also know deep in my heart that Bernie Sanders will not be the Democratic Party nominee because neoliberal elites would rather slather themselves in honey and lay down on a top of an army ant colony than nominate an actual fucking socialist in 2016.

Somehow in this shameful, crazy and almost devastatingly infuriating election cycle it almost makes a certain sort of perverse sense we could end up with a result where literally nobody wins; not even Joe Biden – who I’m sure was looking forward to puttering around the Tulane campus, attempting to cure cancer and text messaging Paul Ryan every single day to remind him about that time Biden beat his ass like a rented mule in the VP debate and may have ultimately saved the country from President Romney in the process.

Once more into the breach to slay that bastard Trump, once more against the palisades of bigotry and evil Joe; there will be time enough to rest when we’re all dead sir.

 

• Nina Illingworth