Eric Zuesse

Robert Reich, the proud friend of Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, says, "there has never been any finding that Hillary Clinton engaged in illegal behavior.”

Everyone except the Obama Administration has “found” that in her handling of her State Department emails, she broke at least the following six U.S. federal criminal laws (none of which laws was so much as considered by the FBI’s ‘investigation’, because it’s too obvious that she did what these laws describe — that she violated each one of these laws):

18 U.S. Code § 2232 — Destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure
(a) Destruction or Removal of Property To Prevent Seizure
Whoever, before, during, or after any search for or seizure of property by any person authorized to make such search or seizure, knowingly destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
(b) Impairment of In Rem Jurisdiction
Whoever, knowing that property is subject to the in rem jurisdiction of a United States court for purposes of civil forfeiture under Federal law, knowingly and without authority from that court, destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of impairing or defeating the court’s continuing in rem jurisdiction over the property, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
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18 U.S. Code § 1512 — Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant
(c) Whoever corruptly
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
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18 U.S. Code § 1519 — Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
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18 U.S. Code § 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, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, 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. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
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18 U.S. Code § 641 — Public money, property or records
Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use, or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof, …
Shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years or both. …
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18 U.S. Code § 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information …
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer —
Shall be fined not more than $10, 000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy, shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.

Selective prosecution is the most extreme when a prosecutor doesn’t even consider prosecuting a person for the easiest-to-convict charges, the “slam-dunk” ones — the criminal laws that most blatantly and unequivocally describe what the person most unquestionably (and easily provably) did, in fact, do — the least-debatable criminal violations in the particular case that is available to law-enforcement. Not even to investigate the most obvious laws that were violated, is to not enforce the most-relevant laws, in the particular matter. Those are the laws. Other laws in the Clinton emails matter (such as the laws that concern only the handling of classified information, and where motive is a key factor) can then be the subjects of possible additional investigations, after an indictment is reached on these primary ones; but, in the Clinton emails-case, those less-certain matters were instead the only charges that were even being considered, at all.

What’s blatantly clear now, to a large portion of the public (but noticeably ignored by Reich), is that there is no equal treatment under law remaining in this country, if there ever was. And here is absolute proof of this inequality-in-the-enforcement-of-the-laws, regarding specifically Hillary Clinton’s email operation. Those people were convicted for violating these laws; she wasn’t even investigated for violating any of these laws.

FBI Director James Comey simply lied. And Robert Reich takes that lie as having exonerated Clinton: “there has never been any finding that Hillary Clinton engaged in illegal behavior” — as if Comey’s statement were some sort of finding of her innocence, regarding her State Department emails operation — as if Comey, who was appointed by the very same man, Obama, who wants Clinton to be his successor in the White House, is the only person whose “finding” has significance, or should have significance, or (perhaps if Trump becomes the next President) will have significance. (Furthermore, Obama and his Attorney General aren’t even bound by the FBI Director’s opinion. But they know that Comey was just doing their dirty-work, by serving as the mouthpiece for it. This Administration is just a gang, no different in that respect, than the George W. Bush Administration were.)

Anyone who looks at those six laws, knows that Reich’s statement was a fraud, designed perhaps to ingratiate himself to a future President Hillary Clinton (and maybe win a post in her Administration), but not designed to constitute honest journalism — which it clearly does not.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.nomic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.ity..Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created ChristianityS: The Event that Created Christianity