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Bill Clinton suggests Biden shouldn't pardon his wife — then tries to wipe her record
Sunny Hostin of Disney's "The View," the co-host who unwittingly
helped derail the Harris campaign, asked former President Bill Clinton Wednesday whether President Joe Biden should shield fellow travelers from accountability with pre-emptive pardons.
Clinton appeared reluctant to endorse the move, even after Hostin personalized the proposal by throwing failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's name into the mix. Although unwilling to advocate for his wife's pardon, Clinton did attempt to sanitize her record, suggesting she did nothing wrong.
Senior Democrats speaking to Politico under the condition of anonymity
claimed last week that top Biden aides have been "conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue pre-emptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House."
Among the names raised during the deliberations organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel, allegedly in Biden's absence, were former
Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney, then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci.
It is unclear whether Hillary Clinton's name came up in the deliberations even though her record has proven to be of great interest in recent years to President-elect Donald Trump and his allies, including Kash Patel, who made sure to mention her in his book "Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy." There might also be some unfinished business.
'These matters absolutely warrant additional exposure.'
Blaze News
previously noted that a Department of Justice report released in May 2023 by special counsel John Durham revealed that the FBI shut down at least four criminal investigations into Hillary Clinton and the Clintons' nonprofit foundation ahead of the 2016 presidential election at the request of the agency's top officials closely connected with the Clinton family.
FBI field offices in Washington, D.C., Little Rock, Arkansas, and New York launched separate investigations into the Clinton Foundation in 2016 for "possible criminal activity."
Then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, who has since become one of the
loudest opponents to Kash Patel's nomination as Trump's FBI director, initially told the field offices investigating the Clinton Foundation to "close their cases," expressing anger at the very existence of the probes. The New York Times indicated that the Justice Department nevertheless kept open the investigation into the foundation for most of Trump's first term.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, whom Trump initially tapped to head the Department of Justice in his second term, said upon the release of the report, "These matters absolutely warrant additional exposure and review."
'Three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received.'
"Donald Trump will be returning to the White House unburdened by the pressure of re-election, with sweeping immunity granted to him, I believe, by the Supreme Court, and an alleged enemies list, we're hearing," Hostin said Wednesday. "Do you think it would be wise of President Biden to pre-emptively pardon any potential targets? What about your wife, Hillary Clinton?"
"They've got a problem with her because, first, she didn't do anything wrong; second, she followed the rules exactly as they were written," said Clinton. "Third, Trump's State Department found — you remember how the emails were such a big issue in 2016? Trump's State Department found that Hillary sent and received exactly zero classified emails on her personal device. It was a made-up, phony story."
While Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton apparently used a personal email server to transmit classified and top secret information. Former FBI Director James Comey
indicated in July 2016 that
from the group of 30,000 emails returned to the State Department, 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional emails were "up-classified" to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the emails were sent.
Comey added, "With respect to the thousands of emails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level."
'If he pardons them, that sort of implies they did something wrong.'
Hillary Clinton, who
previously said under oath that she never sent or received classified messages, claimed in her FBI interview that she did not know what the classified markings in select emails meant. Comey suggested to Congress that it may have been a "reasonable inference" for Clinton to conclude the emails were not classified.
Following a years-long investigation into the matter, the State Department found that 38 State Department officials had been "culpable" in 91 cases of sending classified information that ended up in Clinton's email,
reported the Associated Press.
While the State Department report claimed that there was "no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information," it nevertheless indicated that there were 588 violations involving information then or subsequently deemed classified and "that the use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk of compromise as a private system lacks the network monitoring and intrusion detection capabilities of State Department networks."
The investigation apparently did not look at emails Clinton deleted on the advice of counsel.
After telling the hosts of "The View" that Kash Patel could find fault if so inclined, Clinton said, "If President Biden wanted to talk to me about that, I would talk to him about it, but I don't think I should be giving public advice on the pardon power. I think it's too — it's a very personal thing. It is — I hope he won't do that."
"Most of us get out of this world ahead of where we'd get if all we got was simple justice. It's normally a fool's errand to spend a lot of time trying to get even," added Clinton.
Joy Behar chimed in, "If he pardons them, that sort of implies they did something wrong, which they didn't."
"Not necessarily," said Clinton.
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