L’Emailgate, de Hillary à BHO

L’Emailgate, de Hillary à BHO

Dans The American Thinker, le 8 février, un auteur développe l’argument selon lequel le scandale Emailgate tarderait à éclater pour mieux éclater, parce qu’il pourrait bien impliquer aussi bien le président Obama que l’ex-Secrétaire d’État Clinton, candidate à la désignation démocrate pour les présidentielles. L’auteur est Jonathan F. Keiler, et il ne s’agit nullement d’un polémiste, éventuellement de la droite radicale US, mais d’un ancien officier de marine spécialisé dans les matières juridiques, devenu professeur d’histoire et qui est référencé sur le site du très officiel et respectable site de l’Institut de l’US Navy (voir Jonathan F. Keiler, sur le U.S. Naval Institute.)

L’argument de Keiler est très documenté et extrêmement complexe. Il tient compte du fait que le FBI, comme tous les services fédéraux, n’est nullement dépendant du seul pouvoir exécutif et joue dans cette affaire, notamment dans le chef de son directeur, une partie très délicate. (On retrouve là une constante des grands scandales institutionnels, assez semblables à celles du Watergate.)

L’hypothèse de Keiler est que certains des courriels fautifs de Clinton (expédiés à partir de sa ligne privée), notamment ceux dont le contenu n’a pas été divulgué parce qu’il contenait des informations classées Top Secret, auraient eu comme destinataire le président Obama, sur sa propre ligne privée. Le cas est extrêmement complexe, répétons-le, à l’image de la législation US, et l’on sent bien que c’est bien plus le spécialiste du droit, notamment par rapport aux questions de classification, qui écrit qu’un polémiste politique. C’est bien entendu pour cette raison que l’intervention de Keiler est notable et intéressante, car l’on sait combien le légalisme et le corset du droit constituent des éléments fondamentaux de la vie politique US. Les extraits ci-dessous (débuts et conclusion du texte) sont donc purement indicatifs, moins par souci d’information que pour marquer l’aspect politique éventuellement explosif de la chose : si une telle affaire se concrétisait dans le sens où l’envisage Keiler, c’est tout l’édifice institutionnel des USA qui serait menacé.

« Perhaps President Obama’s involvement is the reason that the FBI has not yet referred charges to the Justice Department in the Hillary Clinton email case.  It may be metastasizing so quickly and so dangerously that not only are agents and lawyers within the agency having trouble keeping up with new evidence of wrongdoing, but that the scandal itself now threatens a constitutional crisis.  The Department of State’s refusal to release 18 emails exchanged between President Obama and Clinton through her unsecured home server at best creates a conflict of interest for Obama (as explained by Andrew McCarthy here) while at worst it raises the likelihood that the President has run afoul of national security laws and ought to be impeached. 

» I always assumed that somewhere in the 55,000 plus pages of email that Clinton belatedly turned over to the State Department there must have been exchanges with the President.  White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in March 2015 that the two occasionally emailed each other without specifying whether the emails went through Hillary’s private email. Earnest also said that Obama did not look at email addresses, though the President was aware that Clinton sometimes used private email. (Obama had originally said he learned about the private email through new reports – a typical Obama story – but backtracked later.)  And remember in March, the only admitted concern was whether Clinton had complied with the Federal Records Act.  [....]

» If Obama were a man who could actually admit a mistake, and also one that legitimately cared for his country, he would cut the Gordian Knot on this brewing crisis by releasing his email exchanges with Clinton -– redacted as necessary – taking a mea culpa for being caught up in Hillary’s malfeasance, and throw her under the bus, which is something he does well.  There likely would be little appetite in the country for impeachment; Obama might actually earn some credit for doing the right thing, and the Democrats would be rid of a problematic and probably unelectable candidate. That would put the Democrats into crisis mode, made worse perhaps, by the very real possibility that Vice-President Biden is also exposed to the scandal and thus might not be ready to step in. This might be part of the reason Biden – with Obama’s evident approval – declined to enter the race in the first place.

» Since Obama is unlikely to take such a step, the only other way to achieve a semblance of justice might be through Congressional action.  Obama would then have to formally invoke executive privilege to hide the emails, which would strongly echo Nixonian tactics and be politically damaging, though Republicans would be at risk too.  Hillary would certainly claim that Congressional hearings prove the whole affair is political after all, and the Democrats would try to stymie matters and use the mainstream media to vilify Republicans as they always do.     

» All this makes FBI Director Comey’s situation increasingly untenable.  He knows now that there is no way Attorney General Loretta Lynch can fairly and properly evaluate the evidence his agents are fast compiling.  If he continues to hesitate, due to political pressure or in hopes of building the perfect case, the situation will fester and worsen.  If Comey is really the stand-up guy that many say, he will act soon, in order to force the hands of Lynch and Obama, put Hillary in the legal peril that she has earned, and Obama in jeopardy too if that is where the evidence leads. In the probable event the administration does nothing or pushes back against an FBI referral, Comey will have to resign, and Congress will have to act. »

Mis en ligne le 9 février 2016 à 07H14