Conservative Writer: Clinton Investigations Should Be Linked
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Andrew McCarthy, a contributor to National Review and former US Attorney, addressed reports connecting the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while Secretary of State to a separate investigation of the Clinton Foundation, telling Chris Stigall during an interview on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that the two should have been linked since the beginning.
"I've always thought that the Clinton Foundation piece was much more sensible in terms of why there was this email system than the classified information piece and the reason the two of them, I think, need to be together is the guys putting together this white-collar fraud case where Mrs Clinton clearly tried to monetize her awesome political power as Secretary of State, those emails are critical to making that case. The thought that they've been, sort of, frozen on the side in this classified information investigation, in which the Justice Department has been making it close to impossible for the FBI to get their hands on stuff, is just outrageous."
He was not surprised by new revelations intimating that Clinton's private server has been compromised by foreign intelligence services.
"The Russians, the Chinese, they actually successfully hack into our protected systems. So, what was the conceivable chance that if the American Secretary of State was systematically conducting her business on a private, home brew, non-secure communication system that these very fine enemy national intelligence services were not going to have hacked into there? To me, it would have been inconceivable if this hadn't happened."
McCarthy stated that he does not think Clinton intended to risk national security, but she should have known that those were the risks.
"She didn't have an objective to damage American national security but as somebody who is as sophisticated as she is in the way classified information works and national security works, she had to know that in her job as Secretary of State, if she set up a system like this, inevitably, national defense information, intelligence information was going to end up being transited and stored on that system."
He believes that, should Clinton emerge victorious in Tuesday's presidential election, Washington could be distracted by this saga for a long time.
"I do think what we'll be facing is a government just mired in scandal and controversy and doesn't really grapple with the threats to our nation, the economic problems that we have, the financial problems, the debt. Imagine that all going by the boards because we'll just have presidency that's mired in scandal."