Lock her up?

Well, maybe not her but somebody close to her. It’s the story that absolutely refuses to die, and possibly with good reason. You may recall that last month the FBI gave a jaw-dropping answer to a request for the release of the rest of Hillary Clinton’s emails from her secret bathroom server. The Bureau told New York attorney Ty Clevenger that they wouldn’t be releasing them because the plaintiff had failed to prove a compelling “public interest” in seeing the documents. That might have proven to be the end of the line, but now a judge in Maryland has ordered that an investigation be opened into the actions of three Clinton attorneys over possible charges of destruction of evidence when the server was purged. (Fox News)

A Maryland county judge has ordered the state bar to investigate three lawyers accused of deleting thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Circuit Judge Paul F. Harris Jr. ruled Monday that the Attorney Grievance Commission and Office of Bar Counsel Maryland Office of Bar Counsel must look into complaints against Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson and David E. Kendall, citing “allegations of destroying evidence,” according to the Washington Times. The ruling came after Ty Clevenger, an attorney in New York City, filed the complaint. He recently was denied files from the FBI related to Clinton’s email investigation, due to what the bureau called a lack of public interest.

It should be noted that this isn’t even a criminal case, though it could impact other court actions down the road. The Baltimore Sun covered the story locally and they get deep into the weeds with the details. This is actually a case being brought before the Attorney Grievance Commission and Office of Bar Counsel in Maryland. The reason this body is hearing the complaint is because the three Clinton attorneys, Mills, Samuelson and Kendall, are all licensed to practice in Maryland and could be looking at “professional sanctions” if they were found to have behaved in an unethical or criminal fashion in their handling of the evidence during the investigation into Clinton’s server.

But imagine the repercussions down the road. With an official finding that Clinton’s team actively worked to destroy evidence, we could yet again see a can of worms opened which the Democrats clearly would rather have fall down the memory hole.

All of this comes as Clinton is touting her new book (out today) and facing some withering reviews in response. One related study comes from Nate Silver, who found that Hillary’s search for “what happened” could have done better if she’d focused on the premise that she ran the most negative presidential campaign in history. (Free Beacon)

Silver, the editor-in-chief of the data website FiveThirtyEight, said that Clinton doesn’t get enough criticism for running a negative campaign. “She ran by various measures the most negative campaign in history and she was successful,” Silver said. “Although Trump helped himself a lot, she was successful at making Trump very unpopular. She didn’t think about ‘how do I make myself more popular’ as much.” Silver said that Clinton also didn’t think about the 15 percent of people who didn’t like either candidate and that she could have won the election had she gotten even half of those voters.

I’ve yet to hear Clinton suggest that her campaign strategy could have been flawed. In her book she apparently admits that promising to put coal miners out of work was one of her biggest mistakes, but the overall lack of any positive message was probably far more to blame. Rather than the coal miners, I would suggest that the entire “Basket of Deplorables” flap was probably the beginning of the end. She obviously felt that Trump was an aggressive and nasty political cage fighter, but contrary to her claims about when they go low, we go high, she actively seemed to work to go even lower.

But returning to the original topic, our exit question for this morning has to be… is this email story ever going to end? And as a follow-up, does anyone believe that there’s still enough evidence out there somewhere to bring the question to a resolution? Cheryl Mills probably knows, but I don’t see where there’s much reason for her to talk about it.