My sympathy for Hillary Clinton has finally run out.

For a long time, I have wanted to give Clinton every bit of leeway imaginable since her fluky, statistical anomaly Electoral College loss to Donald Trump in 2016. It’s an ethicist thing; the Golden Rule is strong here. What must it feel like to be that close to achieving your dream and to have it yanked from your grasp at the last moment? Oh-oh…I’m making Hillary sound like Moonlight Graham.

Still, I can understand why she has been so bitter and angry ever since. On the other hand, to go from “Field of Dreams” to “The Godfather”: this is the life she has chosen. “Politics ain’t beanbag.” It’s been 10 years. Time to grow the hell up.

Hillary’s latest outburst of Trump Hate—always wrongly placed because her own ineptitude, corruption and foolishness lost her that 2016 election—-came on the anniversary of Teddy Roosevelt’s death—wait, no, that was the worst thing that ever happened on a January 6th, but Hillary was using the date to misrepresent the stupid January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. Clinton posted a comment on X, declaring, “Five years ago today, Donald Trump urged his supporters to attack Congress and the Capitol over a proven lie.”

Hillary’s statement is a lie, and Clinton knows it is a lie…several lies, in fact. Trump gave a speech to a large group of his supporters who were angry over his suspicious electoral loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election and who had come to D.C. to protest. The audio and the transcript are not in doubt. The speech was irresponsible coming from a President under the circumstances, and Trump bears some responsibility for the mob going on to demonstrate, then riot, around and in the Capitol. Nevertheless, under no conceivable theory did he “urge his supporters to attack Congress.” He urged his supporters to demonstrate peacefully. Both “urge” and “attack” in Hillary’s statement are demonstrably false.

I also hold that the third lie is the now common Axis narrative that it has been “proven” that the 2020 election wasn’t rigged, fixed, stolen or whatever other word one wants to use to describe that mess of an election. To begin with, it is usually impossible to prove a negative, and rigged national elections, faulty vote counting and other election chicanery are notoriously difficult to address after the fact.

There is no question in my mind that Donald Trump, among others, still believes he won that election. He wasn’t lying about that belief then, and he wouldn’t be now. My belief is a bit less extreme: I believe it was an unfair and unethical election that was tilted hard in the Democrats’ favor by the lockdown, the inexcusably loose use of mail-in ballots and the bias of the news media throughout the campaign, notably in its deliberate embargo of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

I also believe that Hillary Clinton is the last person who should be casting aspersions about a losing Presidential candidate inflaming supporters after a loss. She was substantially responsible for the rapid coalescence of a “resistance” to Trump’s Presidency, and her campaign concocted the Russian Collusion hoax that shackled Trump’s entire term. The nation and the institution of the Presidency is still suffering from the results of Hillary Clinton’s failure to graciously accept defeat, as Richard Nixon did after another less-than-convincing electoral loss in 1960. No, she’s not the only ethics villain in this disaster, what Ethics Alarms has termed “the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck,” the longest running and arguably the most damaging ethics train wreck since the blog started in 2009. And she has lots of company: Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, James Comey, MSNBC, Adam Schiff, Trump himself, the FBI, lazy judges, the Congressional Black Caucus, and others. Hillary Clinton, however, was the one public figure who could have prevented the whole democracy-wrecking scenario: she was Patient Zero for the Trump Derangement virus.

Jonathan Turley wrote a post about whether Hillary’s outburst this week was defamatory. He wrote in part,

“Trump was never charged with inciting the riot despite pledges of Democratic D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to investigate Trump for that crime. The reason is simple. It was not criminal incitement and Trump’s speech was protected under the First Amendment.

The same, however, may be true with regard to Clinton’s posting. Her claim is clearly false….However, American tort law offers robust protections for free speech, particularly when related to political figures.

In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court established the actual malice standard, requiring public officials to shoulder the higher burden of proving defamation. Under that standard, an official would have to show either actual knowledge of its falsity or a reckless disregard of the truth. That standard was later extended to public figures.

The court correctly viewed civil liability as creating a chilling effect on the free press, either by draining publications of funds or inducing a type of self-censorship. Imposing a high standard for proof of defamation, Justice William Brennan sought to give the free press “breathing space” to carry out its key function in our system.

The case established a higher standard of proof for defamation than simple negligence for public officials. The court believed that public officials have ample means to rebut false statements, but that it’s essential for democracy for voters and reporters to be able to challenge government officials. There is also protection for opinion. The issue comes down to the meaning of “urge.” Merriam-Webster defines the word as including “stimulate or provoke” as well as “solicit.”

Clinton would claim that she considers the thrust of his comments as effectively urging the violence even if he did not directly call for violence. Many Democrats obviously share that view.

Many have made unsupported and at times ridiculous claims that are equally protected as opinion. For example, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe has made a litany of such claims, including his declaration on MSNBC that President Donald Trump could be charged (“without any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt”)  with the attempted murder of former Vice President Michael Pence.

Ironically, while Clinton has called for crackdowns on people who she deems as spreading disinformation, she has been criticized for such false or misleading statements. Nevertheless, Clinton’s posting would not make for a strong defamation case, and even if a court did not dismiss the case before trial, it would be challenging to secure a jury verdict on such subjective terms.”

I’ll reluctantly defer to the Constitutional law professor. Hillary should not be sued. She is still an Ethics Villain and an asshole, and the American people ducked a metaphorical bullet in 2016. When I consider how close I came to voting for her, a chill runs down my spine.

ttt