An Open Letter to Ms. Lynch and Mr. Comey

© CLIFFORD C. NICHOLS, ESQ., October, 2015

 

To the Honorable Ms. Loretta Lynch and Mr.James Comey: 

With respect to her mishandled emails, please explain to the American citizens your delay in deciding if Hillary has, or has not, committed acts worthy of a criminal indictment?

To date, she has not even been exposed to the consequences of lying under 18 USC 1001 by being adequately interrogated by the FBI. For what are you waiting? I’m curious because your delay is posing an enormous threat to our country for two reasons. 

First, your failure to resolve this issue is imperiling the credibility of America’s election process. It is undeniably allowing Hillary’s candidacy to remain viable under highly questionable circumstances.  Under the dark cloud of whether or not she has committed felonies, your delay is permitting not only her, but more importantly, her vast number of supporters, to continue believing that her goal of becoming President is both legally permissible and obtainable –until, that is … they hear from you.

Have you yet seriously considered her supporters’ reaction should your ultimate pronouncement effectively halt her advance toward the Presidency? Even were you to make that decision today, we can all agree their reaction would not be good. But surely you must have considered by now that, the longer into the election process you wait, you are only increasing the likelihood of an societal fissure erupting with a magnitude of nuclear proportions.

Are you waiting to see if she wins in the primary? Or is it the Presidency you’re waiting to see if she wins? We can certainly appreciate how you might think this would enable you to quietly pass this political hot potato on to let Hillary decide for herself whether she broke any laws. The problem with his strategy, however, is that it would bring us to the second, and perhaps far more important, reason your delay is posing another, and perhaps even greater, threat to our nation.

This country’s citizens, including its young people, do not only observe such manipulations. We also learn from the outcome of these manipulations whether our government and its laws deserve our respect.

It is your decisions and actions that teach us whether or not we have a government that, in reality, remains subject to the rule of law. Or do we have a government restrained only by the rule of man for the benefit of the rich and powerful?

Our country proclaims the former, but some of your recent decisions, like your failure to prosecute Lois Lerner weaponizing the IRS to target enemies of the President, suggests that is the latter.

We, the people, are confused. However, Hillary’s email debacle offers you an opportunity to redeem yourself.

The matter is not complex. Hillary signed a federal Classified Information Non-Disclosure Agreement promising to not release or reveal classified information to any unauthorized parties. But then, in utter disregard of that commitment, she did exactly that throughout her tenure as Secretary of State.

Recently I asked an attorney for the FBI whether they could speak about this matter. This attorney’s answer was telling:  “I can’t comment on the currently ongoing investigation. But I can say this … if you or I had done anything close to what we all know she (Hillary) did, we would have been in federal custody months ago.” 

What more need be said?

Your continued procrastination is testing the patience of the American public. We are hoping you will demonstrate to us all that you have not acceded to the notion that some government “insiders” are somehow “entitled” to be considered just “too big” to be held accountable for violating the very same laws applied by you with full force and effect to the rest of us.

Such a distorted policy is more symptomatic of a dictatorship than of the unique democracy ours was intended to be. In the past, America has been able to lay claim to being “A Shining City Upon a Hill.”  A primary reason is our nation’s adherence to the principal that justice is, and should always remain blind -- a place where all laws are to be applied equally to us all -- a country where the consequences of violating any law extend even to the rich, the powerful, and the politically connected.

If that is no longer the case, however, at least do us all a minimal courtesy – cut the suspense and drop the pretense. Acknowledge to all of us watching you that this country now really does have a two-tiered system of justice -- one for the rich and powerful, and another for the rest of us.  At least then we can come to grips with the fact that the America we once thought was … no longer is.

 

© Clifford C. Nichols 2015 — Mr. Nichols -- a former research associate of The Heritage Foundation -- graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, Summa Cum Laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, and was elected to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa society. He received his Juris Doctorate degree, Cum Laude, at Northwestern Pritzker University School of Law where he served as a member of the Board of Editors of the Northwestern University Law Review. Today, Mr. Nichols is an attorney licensed to practice law in both California and New Mexico.