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发帖数: 1193 | 1 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-press-buries-hillary-clintons-sins-1476401308
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Oct. 13, 2016 7:28 p.m. ET
1329 COMMENTS
If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are
they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands
accused of groping women.
But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t
heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of
pretty much everything she has been accused of.
It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under
the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media
has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote
its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a
devastating case against a Clinton presidency.
Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the
former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the
attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/
secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why
further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.”
She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of
thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”
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Former Foreign Service Officer James Roberts on how the State Department
rewarded Clinton Foundation donors in Haiti. Photo credit: Getty Images.
A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted
that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “
Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the
liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like
her Achilles’ heel.”
Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs.
Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The
campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into
thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are
separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.
A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News
this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors
working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a
pass was “a top-down decision.”
The Obama administration—the federal government, supported by tax dollars—
was working as an extension of the Clinton campaign. The State Department
coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the
Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court
case.
Worse, Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, as documents obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act show, took special care of donors to the Clinton
Foundation. In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked
a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with
the Haitian earthquake relief were “FOB” (Friends of Bill) or “WJC VIPs”
(William Jefferson Clinton VIPs). Those who made the cut appear to have
been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard
government website.
The leaks show that the foundation was indeed the nexus of influence and
money. The head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Ira Magaziner,
suggested in a 2011 email that Bill Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed of Saudi
Arabia to thank him for offering the use of a plane. In response, a top
Clinton Foundation official wrote: “Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6
million check, this sounds crazy to do.”
The entire progressive apparatus—the Clinton campaign and boosters at the
Center for American Progress—appears to view voters as stupid and tiresome,
segregated into groups that must either be cajoled into support or demeaned
into silence. We read that Republicans are attracted to Catholicism’s “
severely backwards gender relations” and only join the faith to “sound
sophisticated”; that Democratic leaders such as Bill Richardson are “needy
Latinos”; that Bernie Sanders supporters are “self-righteous”; that the
only people who watch Miss America “are from the confederacy”; and that
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is “a terrorist.”
The leaks also show that the press is in Mrs. Clinton’s pocket. Donna
Brazile, a former Clinton staffer and a TV pundit, sent the exact wording of
a coming CNN town hall question to the campaign in advance of the event.
Other media allowed the Clinton camp to veto which quotes they used from
interviews, worked to maximize her press events and offered campaign advice.
Mrs. Clinton has been exposed to have no core, to be someone who constantly
changes her position to maximize political gain. Leaked speeches prove that
she has two positions (public and private) on banks; two positions on the
wealthy; two positions on borders; two positions on energy. Her team had
endless discussions about what positions she should adopt to appease “the
Red Army”—i.e. “the base of the Democratic Party.”
Voters might not know any of this, because while both presidential
candidates have plenty to answer for, the press has focused solely on taking
out Mr. Trump. And the press is doing a diligent job of it.
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