Why Pardoning Hillary Would Be Wrong

While the pollsters and political science professors scramble to save face following their failures to predict Donald Trump’s presidential victory, the rest of us are left to ponder what may be the most disturbing result of all: that Hillary Clinton, despite her corruption in public office, got the most popular votes. Judging by how others have been incarcerated for less, Mr. Trump was spot-on in declaring that Mrs. Clinton should be in prison. With the surge in new revelations about the Clintons’ misuses of public power for personal gain—most glaringly in their willingness to risk exposing our classified secrets to outside hackers in order to conceal the “pay-for-play” dealings with foreign powers that enabled them to amass a sizeable fortune—it defies all notions of justice and fairness to imagine that she should be allowed to walk away with impunity.

The calls from various pundits for Mr. Trump to let bygones be bygones, by forgoing an independent prosecutor and instead giving Mrs. Clinton a pardon, are conveying entirely the wrong message. Of course, we all are exhausted by the recent campaign cycle, and we’d appreciate a break from the seemingly endless acrimony. But the Clintons’ wrongs were more than misguided political decisions; they constitute serious crimes, including felonies that do not require proof of criminal intent (despite the legally incompetent assertions of FBI Director Comey to the contrary). Indeed, if a grand jury investigation were opened, the misuse of classified information that by itself merits prosecution likely would be eclipsed by the Clinton Foundation’s shenanigans, which could warrant criminal and civil RICO actions possibly resulting in lengthy prison time and the forfeiture of all ill-gotten gains—because that’s how the rule of law works.

If we want to show our children, our immigrants, and the rest of the world that we really mean it when we say that no one in America is above the law, here is our chance. And it couldn’t come at a better time. The fact that Mrs. Clinton lost the presidency means that we will be spared the drama of investigating a sitting President. But the fact that she won the popular vote, despite the common knowledge that she is a crook, means that we have much work ahead of us to counter Americans’ growing tolerance for public corruption, a downward trend long in the making.

Read the rest of this op-ed HERE.

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