Posted by Scott Johnson
Let’s go crazy
Donald Trump
attracted a lot of attention of the negative variety with a statement during
his press conference in Miami yesterday. Asked repeatedly about allegations
that the Russian government is behind the hacked and leaked Democratic National
Committee’s emails, Trump took the opportunity to touch on the related subject
of Hillary’s 30,000 deleted emails. “Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump
said, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing; I
think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The Clinton campaign
immediately shifted into overdrive. One of its top policy advisors issued a
statement asserting:
“This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively
encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political
opponent.” The Star Tribune put this incendiary headline over the alarmed
Washington Post story by Phil Rucker and Robert Costa: “Donald
Trump urges Russians to hack Hillary’s email.”
Democrats
and their enablers
promptly accused Trump of “treason.” Right and left, the commentariat
appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
What an epic display
— in varying proportions, depending on who was doing the talking — of bad faith
and stupidity.
The relevant facts
relate to the private email server on which Hillary Clinton conducted official
business as Secretary of State. Clinton had her
lawyers delete 30,000 allegedly personal emails from the server. According to
FBI Director James Comey, the emails have been irretrievably removed from the
server. They are lost.
Let us first note
that Clinton’s server was “wiped” years ago. It is
not available to be hacked anymore. Trump did not call on the
Russians to hack Clinton. If they did it, as they probably did, they did it
long ago. Trump knows that, even if the political clowns and media hacks
pretend not to.
Clinton’s official
emails are also offline at this point. I know this is ancient history, but
c’mon.
It is incredibly
touching, however, to observe the Democrats’ concerns about Russian hacking of
Clinton’s server at this point. Would that it had been evidenced any time
before yesterday, as the classified nature of the preserved emails came into
view.
Trump was putting out
an All Points Bulletin on the emails, enlisting the assistance of those who
are most likely to have accessed and preserved them to cough them up. He was
facetiously lending a hand to law enforcement.
Would the Democrats
prefer that the Russians sit on the emails for their use at a later date?
And remember, these
“personal” emails (allegedly) only dealt with mundane matters such as Madam
Hillary’s yoga lessons, stylists’ appointments, designer pantsuit measurements
and the like. Trump
didn’t call on the Russians to release the truly compromising top secret
materials that Clinton stored on her server in violation of the Espionage Act
(Comey to the contrary notwithstanding).
As I say, it’s good
to see the Democrats and their media adjunct purport to flip out over the
national security implications of Clinton’s private server. Is Trump this
good or are they this bad?
