If Hillary Clinton Indicted Or Arrested, Will ‘President’ Bernie Sanders Win? FBI Targets Huma Abedin Over Emails Scandal
The FBI wants Hillary Clinton indicted and her political foes would love to see her arrested before the 2016 presidential elections ever become a major factor in the investigation of the infamous email server scandal. In the past, Bernie Sanders has refused to use the scandal for his campaign’s advantage, but he may not have to say a word since news about the 22 top secret emails has gone viral mere days before Iowa’s caucus votes on Monday. But should he speak up now?
Iowa’s polls consistently show Clinton and Sanders within the margin of error. On Saturday afternoon, the Real Clear Politics average of Iowa’s polls had Clinton at 47.7 percent and Sanders at 44.3 percent. Earlier last week, the two Democrats were tied neck and neck at 45.7 percent, so it’s hard to say whether the email server scandal has impacted Hillary’s campaign in Iowa at all. But if Bernie were to make it an issue the day before voting begins, it’s certain people would take heed.
Regardless, the main issue is whether the FBI will have Hillary Clinton indicated before the Democratic candidate for 2016 is finally chosen. A State Department deadline requires that Hillary produce the remaining emails before February 29, 2016, but by then the Democratic primary for Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina, and New Hampshire will have already taken place. Otherwise, Super Tuesday falls on March 1, so the Democratic voters for many states will not see the final details contained within the 7,254 pages of emails until it’s already too late.
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It is also possible that voting may become a non-issue if the FBI moves on Clinton. Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay stated that his sources believe the FBI is ready to move at any time with their case against Clinton.
“One way or another, either she’s going to be indicted and that process begins, or we try her in the public eye with her campaign. One way or another, she’s going to have to face these charges,” he said.
Hillary would not be the only one charged if this scenario ever happens. Representative Darrell Issa, who serves on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, told the Washington Examiner that FBI Director James Comey “would like to indict both Huma and Hillary as we speak.” Huma Abedin is Clinton’s top aide and presumably would have known about the private email server.
“You can’t have 1,300 highly sensitive emails that contain highly sensitive material that’s taken all, or in part from classified documents, and have it be an accident,” Issa said Thursday. “There’s no question, she knew she had a responsibility and she circumvented it. And she circumvented it a second time when she knowingly let highly-classified material get onto emails in an unclassified format.”
Issa seems to believe the case against Hillary is a “slam dunk,” but he claims FBI director Comey is “being forced to triple-time make a case” due to the 2016 election and the general popularity of Clinton.
Why Hillary Clinton’s Email Server Is Illegal
The reason that charges can be filed against Clinton is because she used a personal, unsecured email server. While the use of a personal server is not directly illegal, sharing or storing classified information reportedly is illegal. Recently, an inspector general for the agency claimed “some emails were more sensitive than Top Secret, which is also called SAP or Special Access Programs.” At the same time, a statement from the State Department indicated that some of the emails under contention “were not marked classified at the time they were sent.”
The situation gets even stickier for Hillary since she allegedly involved an IT tech to delete some of the emails before using the Platte River Networks (PRN) IT company to store and erase data for her. According to Complete Colorado, PRN provided hosting services for the email server used by then-Secretary of State Clinton.
Back in October of 2015, the company provided invoices for the legal and public relations expenses incurred by handling their end of the email scandal. But what affects Hillary directly was the revelation that some of Clinton’s emails may have ended up on a Datto cloud storage server.
“Datto is a Connecticut IT company whose home webpage boasts, ‘No matter where your data lives, it’s safe with Datto.’ Federal authorities investigating the Clinton server learned sometime in September or early October that some of Clinton’s emails hosted on her private server may have been duplicated on Datto servers because of cloud services provided by Platte River Networks,” explained the report.
It is said that “officials were bewildered when they learned of the cloud storage” since the Clinton email server was not supposed to be backing up potentially top secret data at an offsite location.
Will The Email Scandal Make Bernie Sanders President?
Charges of mishandling classified information would end Hillary’s presidential bid for good. Martin O’Malley is barely hanging on in today’s polls with 4.3 percent in Iowa, so it is safe to assume that Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic caucuses if Hillary is indicted, as threatened. Sanders would still have to make Donald Trump “feel the Bern” in order to win the White House, but this scenario would make that goal difficult since he’d still carry the burden of defending Hillary before the Democratic scandal came to fruition.
Still, it’s questionable if the current U.S. government officials under President Obama will ever prosecute Hillary. When asked about prospects for this scenario, Darrell Issa seems to think the Obama administration will circle the wagons around Hillary.
“I’ve worked with both the last attorney general … and this attorney general, and I really don’t believe they’ll do it,” Issa stated. “Doing it, by definition, would end her run for president. So do I think the Democrats are in an odd situation where the only thing they can do is hold their nose and hold back on an indictment? Sadly, yes.”
Issa’s prediction seems to be coming true since White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Department of Justice (DOJ) would not have Hillary Clinton indicted “based upon what we know.”
“That will be a decision that is made by the Department of Justice and prosecutors over there,” Earnest said, according to The Weekly Standard. “What I know that some officials over there have said is that she is not a target of the investigation, so that does not seem to be the direction that it’s trending. But I’m certainly not going to weigh in on a decision or in that process in any way. That is a decision to be made solely by independent prosecutors but again, based on what we know from the Department of Justice, it does not seem to be headed in that direction.”
With the Obama administration unwilling to act, the question is whether the FBI can do anything. Tom DeLay says the FBI cannot indict Hillary Clinton directly, since a federal grand jury would need to file the charges, but his FBI sources also told him “that if the attorney general does not indict, they’re going public.” If the FBI goes this route, it is possible Sanders can capitalize on the scandal to overcome Clinton for good. He can also distance himself from the time when he once defended those “damn emails.”
The new e-mail release is a disaster for Hillary Clinton. At a minimum, how can someone with such bad judgement be our next president?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2016
Do you think Bernie Sanders should go on the attack over Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal?
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