The Patriot Post® · Americans Held to Different Rule of Law Than Our Elected Officials

What would happen to any American citizen if their computer servers were subpoenaed and they responded by destroying them? Do you think jail time would be a potential outcome? Obviously, Hillary Clinton believes she lives by a different “rule of law” than the average American. These are the very people who decide what the rule of law will be and obviously, who will be required to live by them. As we have seen year after year, and term after term, our law makers and our president live by a completely different set of rules than the American citizens.

The Benghazi committee headed by Senator Trey Gowdy, released this statement: “After seeking and receiving a two-week extension from the Committee, Secretary Clinton failed to provide a single new document to the subpoena issued by the Committee and refused to provide her private server to the Inspector General for the State Department or any other independent arbiter for analysis.

"We learned today, from her attorney, Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server. While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department.”

In July of 1992, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was put into law, to address corporate responsibility and accountability, and also addressed destruction of evidence.

“With the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which President Bush labeled as ‘the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,’ and the increased commitment of prosecutors to stamp out corporate fraud, today’s company executives have more legal requirements and challenges to meet than they have ever faced in the past. In particular, 18 U.S.C. § 1519 takes aim at individuals who obstruct justice by destroying or altering documents in an attempt to thwart criminal and other government investigations or inquiries.”

The institution of this law allows for more strict enforcement and punishment of individuals who destroy evidence during an investigation or criminal case, and punishes those who destroy evidence under even the “contemplation” of an investigation.

“The new provisions reach those who destroy documents merely ‘in contemplation’ of an investigation or ‘any matter’ within the jurisdiction of a federal agency. Moreover, destruction of documents under § 1519 contains a maximum sentence of twenty years, at least twice what could be attained under the previous statutory scheme.”

Based on this law, the average American citizen can be sentenced to prison for destroying evidence even when the government is merely thinking about investigating them or their company. Martha Stewart was sent to jail under the provisions of this law. So it appears as though Hillary Clinton has broken the law and should be held accountable. This means jail time. But will she be punished as any other American would be? Only time will tell if the powers at be will demand she follow the rule of law or if, once again, the Clintons and everyone else on the Hill will be held under different standards than the rest of us.

Although Hillary Clinton claimed she refused to use her government server because she wanted to avoid carrying two different phones, just weeks before in an interview, she admitted to having an iPhone, a blackberry and a iPad.

Clinton said, during her press conference at the UN, “The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.”

Yet it was discovered that "Hillary Clinton emailed with her top advisers at the State Department about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya on their own personal emails,“ as reported by The New York Times.

During her press conference at the UN, Clinton said, "The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private and I think that the State Department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that were provided. ”

When asked about emails, Bill Clinton stated he only sent two emails his entire time in office, one of them going to John Glenn in 1998 and the other went to U.S. troops serving in the Adriatic. He said he still does not use email today.

Questions still remain regarding the legality of Hillary Clinton’s deletion of her server. Americans have to ask themselves if this is the person that should be running for president of the United States? We have certainly seen the negative results of a “lack of transparency” within the Obama administration.

The American people are owed the truth and should have access to the communications from and between our elected officials. When we begin to allow the laws to be manipulated by those in power, while we are held to task, we certainly have graduated from the “elected over the electorate to the ruling over the ruled” (Edward Snowden).