Is Obama letting Hillary Clinton wait out the clock on email scandal?

(Freedom.news) Various news outlets have been drip, drip, dripping information regarding Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal, unsecure email server during his time as President Obama’s secretary of state to send and receive sensitive, highly classified information.

While the use of an unsecured server itself an apparent violation of federal statutes regarding the handling of classified materials, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell in its Sunday editions, reporting that Clinton herself sent 104 emails that have been deemed classified.

Why is that a bombshell? After all, reports prior to the Post’s story on Sunday have hinted that Clinton both sent and received classified materials while as State. Yes, but until now the former top diplomat has maintained that she, herself, had not knowingly sent classified materials via email, a claim that the Post story has now fully debunked:

The finding is the first accounting of the Democratic presidential front-runner’s personal role in placing information now considered sensitive into insecure email during her State Department tenure. Clinton’s authorship of dozens of emails now considered classified could complicate her efforts to argue that she never put government secrets at risk.

In roughly three-quarters of those cases, officials have determined that material Clinton herself wrote in the body of email messages is classified. Clinton sometimes initiated the conversations but more often replied to aides or other officials with brief reactions to ongoing discussions.

In the interest of accuracy, the Post also noted that the use of private, non-secure email was “widespread” at State and “elsewhere in government,” practices that should also be examined as part of the FBI’s probe into Clinton’s case.

But clearly now that the Post knows this information, it is obvious that government investigators know it as well, and likely have known for some time. Which brings us to the question: Why hasn’t the Justice Department charged this woman with criminal misuse of classified materials?

The investigation into Clinton’s email has been going on for nearly a year; Clinton’s defense – that none of the emails contained classified materials at the time they were sent, that they were classified “after the fact,” is a bad joke; that dozens of emails are so sensitive they cannot be released to investigators, is about as serious an intelligence breach as it gets – so what is Justice waiting for?

We know what Obama thinks because he has [improperly] said as much. During an October interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Obama – to the angst of the FBI – said, “I don’t think it posed a national security problem. This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

“Injecting politics into what is supposed to be a fact-finding inquiry leaves a foul taste in the FBI’s mouth and makes them fear that no matter what they find, the Justice Department will take the president’s signal and not bring a case,” said [former senior FBI official Ron] Hosko, who maintains close contact with current agents.

There you have it. But that shouldn’t be the end of this.

At some point the FBI, which has an obligation to the people of this nation, not to the political entities in power, will have to recommend that Clinton and, likely her top aides be prosecuted for violations of law regarding the handling of classified materials. That would include her top aide, Huma Abedin, and Cheryl Mills. But it won’t included Bryan Pagliano, Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign IT director, who followed her to the State Department in 2009. Pagliano has been given immunity by the Justice Department indicates officials are “considering potential criminal charges” against the former secretary of state or her aides, a source told The Daily Caller earlier this month.

As noted by Bloomberg News, the FBI may be planning to wrap up its investigation by May or June, and there will likely be charges; that will give Attorney General Loretta Lynch, appointed by Obama, plenty of time to decide well in advance of a fall Democratic convention whether to pursue the case. She will do what Obama tells her to do, of course.

Once the charges are recommended the clock will begin ticking. Whomever captures the GOP nomination will – or should – make the recommendation that charges be filed a major part of their campaign for the White House [Trump has said he would prosecute Clinton if he wins – but only because he thinks she won’t be under Obama].

The public pressure will be on for Obama to follow through, but he’s on his way out so there are no guarantees. The only thing that might matter is what he believes not allowing a prosecution to move ahead would do for his “legacy.”

For all the world it already looks like this president is trying to let the clock run out so he doesn’t have to prosecute Clinton. Time will tell.

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