CLINTON CORRUPTION AND THE END OF THE RULE OF LAW IN AMERICA

If all that mattered in this election is which candidate is the most vulgar, Donald Trump would get fewer votes.

But thoughtful people who despise him will vote for Trump because the rule of law is on the ballot too.

The most dismaying – and underreported – news dribbling out of Washington in recent weeks is that under Director James Comey, the FBI is now as corrupt as the IRS and the VA.

The investigation of Hillary Clinton was a sham, the FBI’s data drops late Friday afternoons make clear. The fix was in all along.

The evidence that FBI Director James Comey is willing to destroy the legitimacy of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to protect Mrs. Clinton from prosecution is becoming overwhelming.

Hillary and her aides “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said in July. But because Hillary didn’t intend to expose America’s secrets, he didn’t recommend indictments.

Section 793(f) of the Espionage Act punishes “gross negligence” in handling of national defense secrets. Offenders not named Clinton can be sent to prison for up to ten years. Intent is irrelevant. (If Hillary did intend to disclose our secrets, that would be treason, which is covered by another statute.)

Shortly after Congress issued a subpoena for them, someone ordered Paul Combetta of Platte River Networks to destroy with Bleachbit thousands of Hillary’s emails. Destruction of evidence is obstruction of justice under federal law (18 USC 1505). Offenders not named Clinton can be imprisoned for up to five years.

Most assume the order came from Cheryl Mills, who’d been Hillary’s chief of staff at the State Department. This will be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, because Combetta and Mills were given immunity from prosecution, and neither is talking.

Also given partial immunity were Heather Samuelson, the White House liaison for the State Department while Hillary was secretary, John Bentel, State’s director of information resources management, and Brian Pagliano, who installed the private server in Hillary’s bathroom in Chappaqua.

Prosecutors offer immunity to small fry to get them to rat out bigger fish, but giving immunity to Combetta and Pagliano has kept them silent.

Giving immunity to Mills is “equivalent to immunizing H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman in the investigation of Watergate,” said George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley. “Comey removed the greatest threat that could have been used to get two underlings to implicate senior officials, and then gave immunity to the senior official most at risk of a charge.”

When the FBI interviewed Hillary, Ms. Mills was permitted to act as her lawyer, even though she was a material witness. This allowed Mills “to shield her communications with Mrs. Clinton under attorney-client privilege,” noted Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal.

There were fishy side deals to the grants of immunity to Mills and Samuelson. The FBI agreed to examine their laptops only for documents dated before Feb. 1, 2015, and then to destroy the computers.

The New York Times broke the story about Hillary’s private server March 2^nd, the Benghazi Committee issued a subpoena for her emails March 4^th. There was no reason to conceal evidence before then. In effect, the FBI agreed not to search the laptops for evidence of obstruction, then made sure no one else could, either.

Combetta and Mills lied during their interviews with the FBI. That’s grounds for revoking their immunity, but Comey hasn’t.

Did Hillary use a private server to hide sweetheart deals with Clinton Foundation donors? Explicit quid pro quos would constitute acceptance or solicitation of a bribe, felonies for which offenders not named Clinton can be sent to prison for up to 15 years. Were there any in the emails Hillary destroyed? Comey has made no effort to connect the dots.

“The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time,” Dennis Hughes, the first chief of the Bureau’s computer investigations unit, told the New York Post.

If we can’t trust the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to enforce the law when a prominent politician breaks it, when can we trust it?

Donald Trump is many bad things, but he hasn’t been part of the mammoth corruption in Washington Hillary Clinton epitomizes.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.