Obama Lobbies the FBI He publicly intervenes in the probe of Clinton’s private email server.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-lobbies-the-fbi-1444862923
President Obama’s interview on CBS ’s “60 Minutes” Sunday has rightly received attention for his defensiveness about Vladimir Putin’s intervention in Syria. But the President made other news that deserves more attention: to wit, his legal advice to the FBI and Justice Department about Hillary Clinton’s email server.
The FBI has acknowledged it is investigating the former Secretary of State’s use of a private server for official communications, especially her mishandling of classified information. Though she denied in April that classified material had crossed her server, we now know that was false. Hundreds of emails sent to or from her server contained national secrets, some highly classified. She used her own email system in violation of the Federal Records Act and in order to protect her emails from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, and this evasion made her emails vulnerable to foreign hacking.
Yet when Steve Kroft asked if the server posed a security risk, Mr. Obama dismissed the idea by saying “I don’t think it posed a national security problem.” But how would he know unless his lawyers are filling him in on the investigation? Mr. Obama must know as a lawyer how inappropriate it is for a President to comment on a case being conducted by executive-branch officials who work for him.
Mr. Obama also opined that Mrs. Clinton’s actions weren’t comparable to the cases in which former CIA directors John Deutch and David Petraeus pleaded guilty to misdemeanors for mishandling classified information. “We don’t get an impression that here there was purposely efforts on—in—to hide something or to squirrel away information,” he said.
The President has many talents, but we didn’t know mind-reading was one of them. Again as a lawyer, Mr. Obama knows that Mrs. Clinton’s state of mind will be crucial to the FBI’s recommendations in the case. It is hard to believe he wasn’t deliberately trying to work the referees in Mrs. Clinton’s favor. His words cast a pall over FBI Director James Comey, who will now be suspected of following orders if the FBI gives Mrs. Clinton a legal pass.
The White House has figured out how bad this looks because on Tuesday spokesman Josh Earnest said that Mr. Obama’s comment “certainly was not an attempt, in any way, to undermine the importance or independence of the ongoing FBI investigation.” He added that the President “has a healthy respect for the kinds of independent investigations that are conducted by inspectors general and, where necessary, by the FBI.”
But if that were true, Mr. Obama would say nothing at all. The media want to believe that the President is secretly trying to undermine Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, but above all Mr. Obama wants a Democratic nominee who can validate his political legacy by succeeding him in office.
Even if Joe Biden gets in the race, the President does not want Mrs. Clinton to have to cut a plea deal of the kind that she would if the FBI applies to her the same standards it applied to Messrs. Petraeus and Deutch. Our guess is the President knew exactly how he was compromising the FBI investigation on “60 Minutes.”
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