Lock her up?

More and more, it appears the Justice Department should have tried to do just that to Hillary Clinton and that only nefarious interference kept the attempt from occurring.

My colleague Becket Adams is correct in writing that newly released testimony by disgraced FBI attorney Lisa Page makes former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch look blatantly dishonest and makes her infamous “tarmac meeting” with former president Bill Clinton look even sleazier than it already had. Specifically, despite sworn assurances to the contrary from Lynch, Page testified that Department of Justice officials repeatedly dissuaded the FBI from building a criminal case against Clinton for “gross negligence” in her handling of classified information.

What bears further comment is the legal importance of the phrase “gross negligence.” Page said DOJ advised FBI lawyers that “gross negligence” was a charge they could not “permissibly bring” against Clinton because it was “too vague.”

This borders on nonsense. “Gross negligence” is not some vaguely interpretive standard the FBI was creatively deciphering from penumbras of the federal criminal code. Instead, it is a specific, enumerated standard for prosecution under Section 793 (f) of the U.S. Code’s chapter on “Espionage and Censorship.” It says anyone in possession of protected information “related to the national defense” who, “through gross negligence, permits” that information to “removed from its proper place of custody,” “shall” be penalized with up to 10 years in prison.

“Gross negligence” may not be as precise as a numerical equation such as 2 plus 2, but it’s hardly a mystical concept understandable only by sages and seers. Instead, it is a basic legal standard, appearing in U.S. laws too many times to count, meaning “a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care.”

National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, explained this in 2016 when then-FBI Director James Comey first let Clinton off the hook: “With lawful access to highly classified information, she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was ‘extremely careless’ and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.”

Moreover: “In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. [Italics and bolding in the original.]”

What this all means is that even the apparently pro-Hillary FBI lawyers understood that gross negligence had occurred but that the even more leftist Obama-Lynch minions at DOJ convinced them that “malign intent” was needed to prosecute, despite the explicit words of the statute.

This wasn’t just Comey hubristically asserting the authority to decide justice and innocence in Clinton’s case; it was Comey’s hubris combined with interference by the Lynch mob. Minus the interference, based on a plain reading of the law, Clinton should have been indicted.

By some (admittedly debatable) interpretations of the law and the applicable statute of limitations, she still should be.