“If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?” —John Adams (1775)

In 2001, ABC News obtained a recording between Hillary Clinton and a disgruntled former campaign donor, in which she insists she would never use email because of the trail of evidence it creates. “As much as I’ve been investigated and all of that, you know, why would I ever want to do email? Can you imagine?”

Well, can you?

Fast forward to this week and take a guess which presidential contender accused the other of hiding critical information, declaring, “I’m going to continue to raise this because I think it is a fundamental issue in this campaign that we’re going to talk about for the next 62 days because […] clearly has something to hide. We don’t know exactly what it is, but we’re getting better guesses about what it probably is.”

Now, you’re probably thinking it was Donald Trump, given Hillary Clinton’s endless lies about concealing incriminating communications while she was secretary of state. Laughably, though, that was actually Clinton accusing Trump of hiding his tax returns.

Without missing a beat, Trump responded, “Let her release her emails and I’ll release my tax returns immediately.”

Clinton’s attempted pivot to class warfare was an effort to divert attention from the Labor Day holiday weekend FBI news dump of investigative notes taken by agents during their Independence Day holiday weekend interview with Clinton.

Despite heavy redaction, the Clinton interview provided a much better understanding of the extent of her corruption and lies. And additional information about her communications released by the State Department bolsters that understanding.

Trying to throw the media off her crooked trail, Clinton answered some handpicked reporters’ questions on her campaign plane Tuesday — the first time she has taken questions in 275 days.

Asked about her criminal handling of classified data, Clinton asserted, “I went into the State Department understanding classification. I had been on the Senate Armed Services Committee four years before I was secretary of state. I take classification seriously.”

Seriously, she said that.

Reporters continued that line of questioning, so in another diversionary attempt, Clinton suggested that Donald Trump is working with Russian hackers to undermine the 2016 election and other American institutions.

“The fact that our intelligence services are now viewing Russian activity as a potential threat against our electoral system, uh, raises further questions about Trump, and, uh, I think those are questions the American people should be asking. … The kinds of behavior that, uh, Russian intelligence has engaged in and that, uh, my opponent has, uh, applauded, he has made it clear that he does not care whether Putin or his intelligence services attack American institutions. … This is like Watergate.”

Seriously, she said that.

Maybe it is time to enact voter ID requirements nationwide…

Again came questions about the FBI report and Clinton, now agitated, responded, “The FBI resolved all of this. The report answered all the questions. The findings included debunking [Trump’s] conspiracy theory. I believe I have created so many jobs in the conspiracy theory machine factory because, honestly, they never quit, they keep coming back. And here’s another one. It’s been debunked.”

Seriously, she said that.

When it became clear that reporters were not taking the bait, Clinton then started another of her chronic coughing fits, perhaps choking on her own lies, and returned to the first class section of her plane.

Since Clinton refused to provide direct answers to questions, at the risk of “Clinton email burnout,” allow me to highlight the most significant facts in the FBI report and other findings released last weekend.

By way of context, recall that Clinton, in her Benghazi cover-up testimony before Congress, declared, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

If by “it” she meant her “web of lies” about leaving Americans to die in an al-Qa'ida attack in order to provide political cover for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid, it makes the difference between serving time in the White House or the Big House. Of course, the Bill and Hillary Crime Syndicate is very adept at the art of BIG lies — and “getting away with murder,” in the figurative and perhaps literal sense.

I have written in detail about the motives for her Benghazi cover up. Just weeks after the 9/11 attack in 2012, I personally pleaded with Mitt Romney’s communication director to have him challenge Obama in their final debate about the cover up, writing in a memo to Romney, “You must make the case that the reason Obama is obfuscating the facts on who attacked and killed our ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, is to maintain his campaign theme charade that ‘al-Qa'ida is on the run.’”

But to no avail.

Romney, thinking he had the election in the bag, soft-pitched his remarks in the last debate and virtually handed the election to Obama, who then provided Clinton plenty of cover. Cover, that is, until a former federal prosecutor (appointed by Bill Clinton), Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), took on the Clinton case. As chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, he launched an investigation into Clinton’s role in the cover up, and her web of lies began to unravel.

It was clear after the 2015 discovery of Clinton’s illegal “private” email server that she and her handlers were keeping all her communications during her tenure as secretary of state “off the grid” — in order to protect her planned 2016 presidential bid. Once discovered, Team Clinton ordered their lawyers and staff to destroy more than 30,000 “personal emails” before turning the rest over to the State Department for security evaluation.

So what did we learn last weekend?

From the sketchy FBI report, which was the result of a referral from the U.S. intelligence community inspector general, it’s notable that Clinton claimed she “could not recall,” “did not recall,” “did not remember” and “had no recollection” 41 times during the interview.

It’s also apparent that Clinton ordered her emails erased after the first reports became public that she’d been conducting State Department business via an illegal and unsecure email server. “[Redacted] indicated he believed he had an ‘oh s—t’ moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the [Platte River Networks] server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton’s emails.”

Her obfuscating attorneys, Cheryl Mills, David Kendall and Heather Samuelson, claimed they had no knowledge of Clinton’s private email server until after she left the State Department, but Clinton insisted in the FBI interview that it was “common knowledge” and that she “could not recall anyone raising concerns with her regarding the sensitivity of the information she received at her email address.”

When asked what criteria they used to determine which communications they would destroy, Mills, Kendall and Samuelson exercised “assertion of privilege” and declined to give investigators the email addresses and keywords on which they searched.

And is anyone surprised that one of Clinton’s Justice Department interviewers, David H. Laufman, contributed $850 to Obama’s presidential campaigns?

Clinton used at least 13 mobile devices to transmit what we now know were classified messages and pay-to-play communications regarding the Clinton Foundation — often in non-secure areas. “On [redacted] occasions while OCONUS (Outside Continental U.S.), Clinton had direct email contact with an email address for President Barack Obama,” the report reads. “Of the [redacted] emails between Clinton and President Obama, [redacted] were sent and received [redacted].”

Her chief adviser (co-conspirator and cutout), Huma Mahmood Abedin (a Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia), recommended the use of off-grid servers and “indicated the whereabouts of Clinton’s devices would frequently become unknown once she transitioned to a new device.” At one point, her staff used hammers to destroy some of those devices, which explains why the FBI couldn’t recover them for forensic evaluation.

Clinton claimed a laptop and portable drive with a log of all her communications was “lost in the mail,” which seemed only slightly more plausible than “the dog ate it.”

Clinton claimed to have “provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related” (cough, cough).

However, among the 17,488 “personal” emails she thought had been erased, but which the FBI managed to recover from Clinton and State Department servers (and maybe some help from WikiLeaks), it is now clear that many of those were “work related” emails including at least 30 referencing Benghazi and more about other classified national security matters. That’s in addition to the 110 classified emails FBI Director James Comey indicated Clinton had sent among the communications she previously agreed to turn over to the State Department, 38 of which were top secret – compartmentalized. Recall then, that Comey said, “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position…should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”

In fact, of the emails that the FBI recovered, more than 2000 SHOULD have been classified…

The FBI also confirmed that there were hacking attempts on Clinton’s servers. To that end, recall that Clinton sent an email to all State Department employees during her tenure, brazenly warning them not use private email accounts because of “information security concerns” — all while she was using private email accounts.

Regarding the classification markings on some of the communications, the report noted, “Clinton stated she did not know what the "C” meant at the beginning of the paragraphs and speculated it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.“ Clinton said maybe the "C” meant “paragraph C” in sequence, even though there were no paragraphs “A” or “B” preceding it. So, by her account she “takes classification seriously” but does not know anything about classification markings? An agent noted, “Email was marked as classified at the Confidential level by the FBI based on a determination by the Original Classification Authority.”

Clinton claimed she couldn’t remember State Department briefings after sustaining a serious head injury and concussion in 2012. She claimed never having received any instruction on the handling of classified information, although she signed a Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement noting, “I hereby acknowledge that I have received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and protection of classified information.”

Perhaps the “C” meant “concussion” or “corrupt” or “contemptible” or just “confusion.” Indeed, Huma Abedin said that Clinton “is often confused.”

Clinton appeared to play implausibly dumb throughout the interview … and it would appear that, although he was inexplicably absent from the actual interview, Director Comey has determined she is too dumb to prosecute. Within hours of concluding the FBI interview with Clinton, Comey declared Clinton was “not guilty” of any indictable offenses. But, that is not the same thing as declaring her “innocent” of indictable offenses.

The most significant revelation from the FBI’s Clinton interview notes is not the questions investigators asked Clinton, but the questions they did NOT ask her. That would include questions about her motives for concealment, etc.

While Clinton has declared this corruption saga is “over, period,” there are dozens of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits already underway, primarily led by the intrepid folks at Judicial Watch, and many more disclosures that await the State Department’s review and redaction of classified information.

Most notably, a federal judge ordered Clinton to answer — finally under oath — 25 questions prepared by Judicial Watch lawyers regarding her corruption – questions the FBI should have asked Clinton. The answers to those questions are due on 29 September, but expect some legal maneuver to delay her responses.

For the record: Title 18 USC §2071. “Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally – (a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record…filed or deposited with…any public office… shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. (b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record … willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and SHALL FORFEIT HIS OFFICE AND BE DISQUALIFIED FROM HOLDING ANY OFFICE UNDER THE UNITED STATES.”

Again, “and SHALL FORFEIT HIS OFFICE AND BE DISQUALIFIED FROM HOLDING ANY OFFICE UNDER THE UNITED STATES.”

Oh, and never mind the double standards, like the case of Maj. Jason Brezler, a decorated Marine who sent a classified document through a personal email account in an effort to get it into a forward operating base to save Marine lives. Brezler is now facing prosecution.

In 1996, the fourth year of Bill Clinton’s first term, esteemed former New York Times’ syndicated columnist William Safire, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, penned a prescient indictment of Hillary Clinton’s “Blizzard of Lies.” Safire wrote, “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady … is a congenital liar. Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.”

He concluded, “[Hillary Clinton] is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.”

That was 20 years ago. The only thing that’s changed in the last two decades is that Hillary Clinton has become much more proficient at lying.

Do any of her hardcore Socialist Democratic Party constituents care? No. But shedding light on her unmitigated corruption will keep young and moderate voters away from the polls.

Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis