Hillary Clinton’s unethical behavior

The absurdity of this Presidential election cycle is accelerating. We are faced with the Hobbesian choice of a reality TV star with no political experience who sounds like a cross between a carnival barker and a sports announcer and a mendacious, paranoid, pandering partisan with a used car salesman’s pitch without a whiff of the greasy charisma. Now we also have the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joining political organizations by dropping incendiary information into the news cycle late on a Friday before a holiday weekend.

Lest anyone read the litany of statements damaging to Clinton, the mainstream media exclaims, “Nothing new!” This scandal stays on its feet despite Democratic and media attempts to shove it down the stairs into the basement and close the door. It keeps staggering right into the living room like a drunken uncle no one invited, but since you had to take his keys away, he stays.

{mosads}It has gotten to the point where I, a dedicated political junkie, do not watch the news. I’ve taken to watching American Ninja Warrior and America’s Got Talent. Extreme obstacle courses and death defying spectacles seem so comforting compared to the semi-reality of this season’s politics.

How can one suspend disbelief and continue to pretend Hillary Clinton’s assertions that she had no intention of keeping her work related emails (which belong to the government, not her) from public view are true?

Emails were destroyed utilizing Bleachbit after she had a legal obligation to produce them. That doesn’t really matter because she already had a legal obligation to provide them to the government. She never should have used an unsecured private server and she should not have used private email for official business.

The destruction of those emails was followed by the use of Bleachbit specifically because her acolytes knew that the press and Congress were after the documents — legally. How much more obvious can it be that it was intentional? The absurdity is breathtaking: an aide smashed some of her electronic devices with a hammer. The ones she didn’t misplace, I guess?

When I first saw that assertion on the internet, I thought it was a joke. As for her inability to recall much of anything regarding the emails or understand her obligations towards those official emails, either she is a liar or she is wildly incompetent.

If you have not noticed, her defenders have abandoned the question of whether the intermingling of Clinton Foundation business, State Department access and favors and the generation of huge amounts of cash for the Clintons through speaking engagements presents the appearance of impropriety.

They have retreated to the defense that there is no irrefutable evidence of a direct quid pro quo — as if anyone would be foolish enough to send an email that said “Pay Bill $500,000 for a speech and I will make sure things go your way with the State Department”.

They are now conceding it looks horrible but, you know, everyone does it. No, everyone else doesn’t have their spouse paid millions for speeches while they are Secretary of State and can bestow government access and favors, or have a Foundation that pays their unofficial spies.

They shame anyone who questions whether the Clinton Foundation does wonderful work. Clinton used the Foundation to pay Sidney Blumenthal, her private foreign policy advisor banned by the Obama White House, $10,000 a month for questionable information about Libya — while he was angling to make money in Libya; never miss an opportunity to profit from a country’s destruction. 

Is that the altruistic good work Clinton Foundation donors thought they were paying for? The sheer number of dubious, putrid Clinton activities has drowned out attention to behavior that for a normal candidate would be career ending. With Hillary Clinton? It has become normal. And that is the danger.

Tammie S. Haynes is an attorney and mediator living in the Houston area. She may be reached at, tshaynes@tshayneslaw.com