August 30, 2022

The FBI’s Clinton-Trump Double Standard

Yes, there is one — and it’s even more outrageous than you think.

It happened on July 5, 2016, but we remember it like it was last week: “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Those were the words of then-FBI Director James Comey, who said so during a remarkable press conference just four months ahead of the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and just days after Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch had surreptitiously met Bill Clinton on the tarmac at the airport in Phoenix. To talk about, oh, kids and grandkids.

That “extremely careless” language was a deliberate edit by Comey — one specifically designed to absolve Clinton of the criminal penalties that would’ve been required had she and her cronies been found “grossly negligent” in their handling of classified information.

Indeed, Comey said that “any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position” should’ve known not to communicate classified information across unsecured servers. He further said that “hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account,” and that “it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”

Hmm, ya think?

For these reasons, as our Mark Alexander and others have repeatedly pointed out, Hillary Clinton’s acknowledged mishandling of classified information via unsecured electronic transmission systems was incomparably more egregious than Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information on hardcopies kept within secure areas of his Mar-a-Lago estate. We don’t know what documents, exactly, were in Trump’s basement, but we do know that they were infinitely less susceptible to compromise than the classified and top-secret info that was being freely passed around on clintonmail.com.

And yet, a moment after Comey’s damning assessment of Clinton’s behavior, he let her off the hook: “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

Comey, at that point, no doubt felt that he’d accomplished his mission — that he’d defused the looming expectation among many voters that Clinton would have to answer legally for her private server malfeasance. Comey would ultimately be forced to revisit this issue just 11 days before the election due to new emails and new information becoming available, but the FBI has already made its decision: Clinton would not be held legally accountable for her clear violations of the Espionage Act.

And, try as we might, we can’t remember the FBI ever executing a raid of Hillary’s Chappaqua home.

Now contrast this kid-glove treatment with that of Donald Trump, a distinction that hasn’t been lost on the editors of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. They write:

We criticized that decision at the time, but for better or worse Mr. Comey and the Obama Justice Department had set the Clinton Standard for treating a prominent politician who mishandles classified documents. Lesser public officials might have been prosecuted, or at least sanctioned, and some were. But from then on any such prosecution for comparable alleged offenses has to be made in light of the Comey-Lynch-Clinton precedent. All of this bears on the current furor over Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago. If Mrs. Clinton wasn’t prosecuted, is there a different standard for Mr. Trump?

The question answers itself: Of course there’s a different standard. And we haven’t even mentioned Clinton’s obvious obstruction of justice, her deletion of 33,000 emails under congressional subpoena, her “acid washing” of the incriminating hard drive with BleachBit, and her destruction of multiple mobile devices with hammers.

“Most Republicans, including me, believe when it comes to Trump, there is no law.” So said South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday night. He continued: “It’s all about getting him. There is a double standard when it comes to Trump. What happened with Hunter Biden is that the FBI weighed in to make sure the story didn’t break before the 2020 election. We now have whistleblowers at the FBI telling [Republican Senator Chuck] Grassley that they were told to slow down and back off Hunter Biden.”

Graham then offered a chilling assessment of where the Democrats’ rotten and relentless investigation of Donald Trump may be headed: “And I’ll say this: If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle … there’ll be riots in the streets.”

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.