news

Clinton Decision Erodes Justice
By Rep. Brian Babin
Beaumont Enterprise
July 14, 2016

Our nation’s top law enforcement officials took a dangerous turn last week when they essentially rewrote the law for the well-connected and privileged. This should be deeply troubling to ordinary Americans – those on both the left and the right. For those of us who work hard every day, play by the rules, and live by the law, when we cross the line, it is the law that holds us accountable.

That standard of law does not seem to apply to the Clintons. John Adams warned during the forming of our Constitution that we must be a nation of laws—not of men. Undermining this founding principle for the privileged not only demonstrates poor judgment, it further erodes our trust in the institutions of government. And so it is left for us to now ask whether what we have come to is a government of laws or a government of the rich and powerful. Do we have a Department of Justice or a department of “just us?”

FBI Director, James Comey, testified before Congress to the many laws that former Secretary Of State Clinton broke, acknowledging “extreme carelessness” while denying “gross negligence,” which by definition are one in the same. Therefore, the choice not to apply the law equally to Hillary Clinton is not only a major blow to public confidence in the rule of law and equal treatment under the law, it also suggests that the rule of law has become nothing more than a word game. It confirms everything that we hate about the current state of politics.

The FBI basically just wasted millions of dollars to confirm that everything Secretary Clinton has been telling the American people is a bunch of lies and it does not matter.

However, it has mattered to far less powerful Americans in similar circumstances who have had their careers and lives destroyed. Public servants and military service members who were not in positions to hold private meetings with the Attorney General -- as Mrs. Clinton’s husband did just days before the decision -- have been jailed, fined and lost their jobs and security clearances.

We may never know how much damage was caused by Clinton’s callous disregard for the law and our national security secrets. Were informants killed, lost, or compromised due to her negligence? Do foreign intelligence services retain the tens of thousands of emails from her private, unsecured servers that can now be used against the United States or against her to the detriment of the United States? We have a duty to find out