Independence Day at Clinton.com

Happy Fourth of July all. It looks like our weather will preclude firework (rain off and on all day), so maybe the barbecue will need to be held indoors. Now, what has transpired since yesterday?

Hugh Hewitt: What we know about Hillary's server

When it comes to the presumptive Democratic nominee's server, here is what we do know. We know what the Inspector General's report told us. We know that her aide has invoked the Fifth Amendment. We know that Guccifer hacked into systems that held at least some of her emails. We know that she deleted 33,000 emails without permission or input from the government.

We know lots but we don't know what the FBI knows. But we most assuredly know what the Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians do vis-a-vis high value intelligence targets. Which is everything they can do. Quietly. Effectively.

Which is why you shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton even if she isn't indicted. Ask yourself how you would feel if your worst three enemies had every bit of email, text and direct messages you had sent and received for the past five years. Would you be vulnerable to them? Could they manipulate you or your correspondents? Could they do so without you knowing? Would they have a detailed knowledge of you, your methods and operations, your strengths and your weaknesses?

Sen. Tom Cotton Quips: FBI Might Ask Putin for Copies of Missing Hillary Emails. Or NSA. I suspect the FBI has the vast majority of the 30,000 deleted emails. Yes, most of them are junk, but some are not. He also noted Lynch-Clinton meeting 'raises questions about interference'. Ya think? one Althouse commenter made a good point:

ADAMS: Yeah. And that’s actually a Justice Department value. They don’t want to influence an election by indicting before elections. That’s a written guideline.
On the other hand, nobody’s above the law. You know, Hillary’s not above the law, and the king should not be above the law. And so we have these two irreconcilable American values clashing in this, and I don’t know which way it’s gonna go.

Now, that guideline will probably kick in pretty soon. Bill Clinton needed to know whether or not the FBI was in the last stages before recommending an indictment, or if he was the target of a RICO case. Had that been the case, the Attorney General would have kicked him off her plane (because that would have been a clear ethiics [sic] violation) The fact that she did not kick him off the plane, indicated that the answer is no, they're not on the verge of an indictment. The fact that it the answer was no, meant that it was safe for Hillary not to cancel her interview with the FBI, tentatively scheduled for the following Saturday.

 Michael Godwin fears Loretta Lynch falling under the Clintons’ corrupting influence

. . . But that’s the way the Clintons roll.

Wherever they go, whatever they do, ethics are trashed and suspicions of criminal conduct follow them like night follows day.

It’s who they are and it’s self-delusional to believe another stint in the White House would make the Clintons better people. Power exacerbates rather than cures an absence of integrity.

Yet there’s another dimension to their chronic crookedness, and it gets insufficient attention even though it might be more important to the nation’s well-being.

It is that, in addition to being personally corrupt, the Clintons are corrupters. They are piggish users, with the people and institutions around them inevitably tarnished and sometimes destroyed even as the Clintons escape to their next scam.
. . .
Yet her lifetime of good work and the hope for a fresh start at Justice are now overshadowed. She acknowledges the meeting with Bill Clinton was a mistake, and pledged to accept the recommendation of FBI agents and career prosecutors on whether Hillary should face charges.

That’s not enough, not nearly enough, given the circumstances and stakes.

Cory Booker wants CNN's Brianna Keller to think that she's "frustrating" voters by "parsing" the Hillary email story over distinctions "with barely a difference."

Booker is there with his talking points, but Keller is dogged. She says: "Back in 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Valerie Plame case, this was because of his longstanding relationship with Karl Rove, and he wanted to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Why doesn't the same standard apply here?"

Booker's answer: "You're going far back into history with a case that I'm not truly familiar with. I can't make a distinction there."

Back when John Ashcroft was the devil.

Just One Minute: Get Back, Loretta!

AG Loretta Lynch kinda-sorta recuses herself after her debacle of a meeting with Bill Clinton.

Of course, they had a lot to talk about. If the conversation about Hillary's emails lagged, there was the question of whether Hillary passed along State Dept. info about a Greek bailout to her hedge-fund son-in-law, with Bill as a possible conduit.

And  Hillary Talks, Later Walks

The Hillary kabuki continues with her FBI interview today. And even reliably lefty spinners feel obliged to bash Bill Clinton's shameless meeting with AG Loretta Lynch, which is yet more evidence the media thinks Hillary is safely home.

I would love to be surprised by the outcome.

Me too. Jazz Shaw at Hot Air looks at The squishy fallout from Clinton’s FBI interview

. . . She certainly sounds like someone who knows that she’s off the hook and there’s a good chance that she has reason to be optimistic. (More on that in a moment.) But some, including Anita Kumar at McClatchy, still think that this matter has damaged her politically no matter what happens next.

No matter how the FBI investigation into the handling of sensitive information on Hillary Clinton’s personal computer server ends, it likely will hurt her presidential bid.
If she is indicted, she will face further questions about her honesty and perhaps even calls for her to step aside. If she isn’t indicted, as many legal experts predict, critics will accuse the Obama administration of letting her escape charges merely because they want her to win the White House.
Clinton was interviewed by the FBI Saturday for three-and-half hours at its headquarters in Washington, according to her campaign, suggesting the inquiry is nearing its end.

In some long bygone era I might have agreed with Kumar on this. There was a time when neither party would even consider nominating someone who was being looked at by the feds in a criminal investigation, but those rules no longer seem to apply. The Clintons have been embroiled in scandals and controversy for so long that it seems to be baked into the cake. Further, the electorate is so divided along partisan lines that conservatives will never trust Hillary Clinton no matter what the outcome and the Democrats won’t abandon her unless she’s actually locked in a cell somewhere, leaving her unavailable to show up for the swearing in ceremony. (It’s all a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy you know.)

The Clintons have been around for decades. But some media types have pulled total 180s on them. Just in case you need to know where Dick Morris and Arianna Huffington stand.