appearance of impropriety

Ready or Not Clinton Corruptees: Your “The E-mail Scandal Is Anything But Nonsense” Update For Today

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

sending email

I care about you all, I really do. Clinton Corruption is not incurable; it can be cured if detected early, slowly, with a steady intake of facts, with the  generous  application of  basic ethical values and the gradual acceptance of the concept that they matter in leadership, because ethics justify trust.

Let us being today’s session with the rantings of a CCS (Clinton Corruption Syndrome) sufferer, Washington Post’s relatively objective columnist Chris Cillizza, who shows the advanced and probably hopeless progression of Clinton corruption with his most recent column. His sad delusion: Hillary’s nomination is inevitable, it’s too late to challenge her, so Democrats, and the nation, should just accept it. This aids Clinton, or course, placing her in Clinton Nirvana, where there is no accountability. Cillizza shows the ravages of Clinton corruption when he says that “Clinton has been under fire” for her private e-mail server and her responses to the unfolding controversy. This plays the Clinton enabling game so popular in the left leaning news media, discussing the politics of the scandal, like it’s a football game, rather than honestly disclosing the obvious conclusions from it.  The episode has already proven that Clinton is unqualified for the Presidency—incompetent, more concerned with personal interests than national welfare, dishonest, arrogant, untrustworthy, and dangerous. It is a great boon to Clinton to convince the public that all of these revelations are to no effect, because there is nothing to be done. “Move on!” was the mantra of the anti-impeachment crowd  when it was shown that Bill Clinton had disgraced the office; now it’s “What difference, at this point, does it make?” Of course Democrats aren’t stuck with Hillary. Would Cillizza make this argument if she were shown to be suffering from dementia? If she were shown to have committed treason? If she killed someone? If she dies, would they put her on the ticket anyway, like El Cid leading his army post-mortem? The only reason anyone is making the Carole King argument (“It’s too late baby”) to bolster Hillary is because they think the public really doesn’t think habitual lying and lack of trustworthiness is disqualifying.

It is, and I’m betting a critical mass of Democrats understand that, or will, because of developments like these… Continue reading →

KABOOM! Sen. McCaskill Disgraces Herself On National Television

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

head blowsWhat a horrible thing for a U.S. Senator to inflict on her state. Brains must have been splattering all over ceilings, furniture, family members and TV screens during her excruciating live interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”  There she was, a member of the U.S. Senate representing the great state of Missouri, grinning like a zany and spewing the Clinton campaign’s desperate talking points—from March!—falsely and insultingly insisting that in maintaining a secret and non-conforming private e-mail server while Secretary of State that, as Democratic hack Donna Brazile said later on a truncated round table, that Clinton did nothing wrong.

Just violating policy, being irresponsible, placing official data in jeopardy, destroying potential evidence, and lying about it, but nothing wrong...

“This is a partisan witch hunt!” said Senator McCaskill. Hillary has been forthcoming and complied with every request! She wasn’t the first Secretary of State to use private e-mail! The materials weren’t classified when she had them! There’s no indication she had a motive to expose national secrets! (This is a new one on the talking points list and an audacious straw man. Nobody has argued that Clinton was a spy or committing treason; what she did was place State Department communications at risk to hackers and exposure for her own protection and advantage.) Then McCaskill paraphrased the “let’s change the subject” talking point we have heard now almost verbatim from Clinton and her surrogates: “Hillary Clinton is a fighter, and she will fight through this and continue fighting for Americans”—all while smiling madly as if the whole thing was a big joke, since it all is “nonsense.” Continue reading →

The Clinton E-Mail Scandal, Part One: Ethics Corrupter For President! Her Campaign’s “Nonsense” Memo

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I'm just making an analogy here--I'm not saying those tentacle-shooting vamps in The Strain are Clinton supporters. That doesn't mean they aren't, though...

I’m just making an analogy here–I’m not saying those tentacle-shooting vamps in The Strain are Clinton supporters. That doesn’t mean they aren’t, though…

Portraying the currently developing scandal regarding Hillary Clinton’s e-mails while Secretary of State as just politics and the “kind of nonsense” that “comes with the territory,” Clinton flack Jennifer Palmieri  sent out a detailed message to Clinton supporters and Democrats. It is designed to mislead them about the critical issues raised by this matter, which are certainly not nonsense, to coordinate with the news media, which is trying desperately and unsuccessfully to embargo this story because it is damaging to Democrats (more on this in Part Two), to make the public dumber about how leadership and government works, and to provide slick rationalizations to those Clinton supporters inclined to be part of the disinformation campaign.

This is sinister and disgusting stuff, the essence of ethics corruption. For an unethical leader, like Clinton, to gain power, she must make a large proportion of the public insensitive or outright ignorant of basic ethical principles, and, if possible, as unethical as possible. The effort to trivialize this serious example of what’s so wrong with Hillary Clinton as just another “vast right wing conspiracy” is part of this process. Continue reading →

Ethics Verdict: Hillary Clinton, As Well As Her Spokespersons, Directly And Intentionally Lied About Her Emails, And The News Media Has An Obligation To Make That Clear

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

classified

The fact that Hillary Clinton is a serial liar and is preparing to deceive her way to the Presidency of the United States is of utmost importance to the nation. This is a fact, by the way. So far, the news media has allowed the usual Clinton strategy of obfuscating, denying, confusing and blurring instances of their misconduct, as well as distracting attention with new scandals involving them (like this one), succeed as it has in the past. This must stop. Contrary to the Clinton Credo, character matters, and the greater the power a leader has, the more it matters. A leader who engages in blatant lying has no respect for those she leads, and cannot be trusted. Those who cannot be trusted should not lead. The news media has an obligation to let us know who cannot be trusted.

It is as simple as that.

We watched that classic Clinton strategy in action when two inspector generals announced that they were calling upon the Justice Department to investigate Hillary’s alleged mishandling of classified Sate Department materials via her private server, in violation of government policies, her own department’s policies, and responsible stewardship and principles of cyber security. Immediately, Clinton began muddying the water and boring the public by launching a dispute over whether or not it was a “criminal” investigation, using undue influence to get the New York Times to change its story, and suddenly making the controversy about the messenger rather than its message.

Oh, the Clintons are good at this, no doubt about that.

Now here is another example in the same controversy.  Though Clinton has insisted that there was nothing classified on her email system and that any dispute is just a technical dispute “between agencies” 41 of the messages turned over to State by Clinton were recently given classified status by the State Department. Clinton’s word-parsing defense has been that she did not send or receive any material marked classified, but as law professor Jonathan Turley explained succinctly (he has been in the classified loop in the past), virtually anything coming out of the office of the Secretary of State would be automatically considered classified as a matter of course until it was reviewed and determined not to be classified. Clinton’s denials are based on typical deceit designed to fool the uninformed: her exchanges on her illicit private e-mail server weren’t classified because they were made on her illicit private e-mail server!

(Meanwhile, there are all those other e-mails Hillary had destroyed before the State Department could review them and after she knew that they would be subpoenaed.  Who else has them? Never mind: we trust Hillary’s judgment, right?)

Writes Turley in his latest post on this topic (like me, the usually liberal George Washington University law professor professor seems to be especially offended by Clinton’s dishonesty, recklessness and smug denials ): Continue reading →

“You Know I Can’t Hear You With All Those Ethics Alarms Ringing”: Hillary Clinton’s CNN Interview

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Hillary_Clinton_2016

The frightening thing—it should frighten Democrats more than anyone, but if they have let Hillary get this far, they may be beyond frightening—is that Hillary Clinton had a long time to prep for this interview—her first substantive one since announcing her candidacy, about five or six scandals ago—had a hand-picked, friendly interviewer, was not pressed to clarify any of her non-answers, obfuscations or incomprehensible blather, and she still came off looking defensive, evasive, and basically like Tommy Flanagan in drag.

Ethics Alarms were ringing so loudly that the interview was almost inaudible. My observations in bold….

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT:  Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for talking to us today.  You’re here in Iowa for a couple of events.  You’re the front-runner in this state but we’re also seeing Bernie Sanders attract a lot of attention.  He has had big crowds here, 10,000 people in Wisconsin last week, 7,500 people in Maine last night. Why is it, do you think, that someone who is a self-described Democratic socialist is really attracting this organic interest that your campaign seems to be struggling a little bit with?

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE:  Well, first of all, I always thought this would be a competitive race.  So I am happy to have a chance to get out and run my campaign as I see fit and let other candidates do exactly the same.

Non-responsive. Also a lie: Clinton has always assumed she could get the nomination by just showing up.

I feel very good about where we are in Iowa.  We are signing up thousands of volunteers, people committed to caucus for us.  We have a committed supporter in every one of the 1,600 precincts.  And one of the things that I learned last time is it’s organize, organize, organize.  And you’ve got to get people committed.  And then they will follow through and then you bring more people.

Non-responsive.

So I feel very good about where my campaign is.  It’ll be three months and a few days that we’ve been at this.  I think I’ve learned a lot from listening to people in Iowa.  And it’s actually affected what I say and what I talk about on the campaign trail.

Non-responsive.

So I couldn’t be happier about my campaign.

Non-responsive. Pretending to open yourself to a candid question and answer session and then refusing to answer the very first question while pretending you did: Dishonest. Disrespectful.

KEILAR:  Senator Sanders  has talked about how, if he’s president, he would raise taxes.  In fact, he said to CNN’s Jake Tapper, he would raise them substantially higher than they are today, on big corporations, on wealthy Americans. Would you?

CLINTON:  I will be laying out my own economic policies.  Again, everybody has to run his or her own campaign.  And I’m going to be telling the American people what propose and how I think it will work and then we’ll let voters make up their minds.

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself actually let voters know what I stand for. After all, I’m a vagina. That’s what really matters.”

KEILAR:  Is raising taxes on the table?

CLINTON:  I’m going to put out my policies and I’ll other people speak to their policies because I think we have to both grow the economy faster and fairer so we have to do what will actually work in the short term, the medium term and the long term.  I will be making a speech about my economic proposals on Monday.  And then I look forward to the debate about them.

If Clinton made a speech Monday (July 7) about specific economic proposals, she did it in her closet, because all anyone actually heard was this.

KEILAR:  I’m wondering if you can address a vulnerability that we’ve seen you dealing with recently.  We see in our recent poll that nearly six in 10 Americans say they don’t believe that you’re honest and trustworthy. Do you understand why they feel that way?

CLINTON:  Well, I think when you are subjected to the kind of constant barrage of attacks that are largely fomented by and coming from the Right and –

The vast right wing conspiracy again! Ironic, because one very good reason people shouldn’t, and  many sane people actually do not, trust Hillary is when she made teh same accusation on the Today Show to Matt Lauer, claiming that the Monica Lewinsky scandal had been “largely fomented by and coming from the Right,” when in fact she knew otherwise and was lying for her husband.

KEILAR:  But do you bear any responsibility for that?

CLINTON:  – well, I – you know, I can only tell you that I was elected twice in New York against the same kind of onslaught.

“I got away with it before, didn’t I?” Continue reading →

The Most Unethical Prosecutor Of All: Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Mosby

In a legal ethics seminar I taught this week for government attorneys, the vast majority of them voted that Marilyn Mosby’s vainglorious announcement of charges against six officers in the death of Freddie Gray was prosecutorial abuse, and a blatant violation of professional ethics rule 3.8, which directs that (this is the Maryland version)…

The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:

(a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;

…
(e) except for statements that are necessary to inform the public of the nature and extent of the prosecutor’s action and that serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose, refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused and exercise reasonable care to prevent an employee or other person under the control of the prosecutor in a criminal case from making an extrajudicial statement that the prosecutor would be prohibited from making under Rule 3.6 or this Rule.

Of course it was a breach of ethics, and an outrageous one. Her statement, which I discussed here, not only overstated her justification for bringing the charges, which were rushed and announced before a careful investigation was completed, it also stated that the officers were guilty, and worse, that the charges were being brought because the demonstrating and rioting protesters has demanded it. Mosby’s words suggested that she stood with the mob. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Obamas’ “Private Party”

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

prince

President Obama and his wife, Michelle invited about 500 guests to a White House party where pop icons Prince and Stevie Wonder entertained guests. Among the guests were Al Sharpton, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and his date, singer Ciara, Jon Bon Jovi, James Taylor, Tyler Perry, Connie Britton, Angela Bassett, Gayle King, Tracee Ellis Ross, fashion designer Naeem Kha, American Express exec Ken Chenault,  former Attorney General Eric Holder, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, as well as about 480 others of doubtlessly equal glitter who didn’t squeal about the blow-out on Twitter or Instagram or who weren’t mentioned by other guests who did.

The party was not mentioned on the President’s official schedule, and it almost managed to occur without publicity until the White House news briefing on Monday afternoon, when Josh Earnest was grilled about it. The White House spokesman said two interesting things, one audacious in its blatant dishonesty and Orwellian logic, and the other ….interesting. The first:

“I think the fact that we’re talking about a private event and the fact that details of this are known is an indication that the president is committed to being transparent. At the same time, the president and first lady are going to reserve the right to host private parties at the White House, and they did it on their own dime.”

Further proving how transparent the President was, Earnest announced that no guest list would be provided to the press or the public. Now that’s transparency. The other statement:

[T]”he President and First Lady are going to reserve the right to host private parties at the White House, and they did it on their own dime. I think that’s consistent with the kinds of values that they have talked about.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

“Are there any ethical problems with the Obama’s “private party”?

Continue reading →

Thoughts Upon Watching George Stephanopoulos Interview Another Hillary Clinton Advisor This Morning

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

george

1. Why is George Stephanopoulos still being allowed to interview anyone connected to, critical of or opposing the campaign of Hillary Clinton? He has an irreparable conflict of interest and the appearance of impropriety. He was deceptive regarding his continued support for the Clintons, by not reporting serial large contributions to their foundation/political slush fund. ABC is essentially ignoring basic journalism ethics.

2. Interviewing another one of Hillary’s paid liars--I didn’t catch his name, and frankly, they are fungible: let’s call him :Lanny Davis 2016″—George asked the same question about trade that Jake Tapper did, but barely pressed on after receiving the same evasive answer. Why? Because Tapper is a real journalist and George isn’t? Or because George was attempting to show he is objective by asking the question, but is still essentially an undercover, though not so covered, Clinton booster?

3. George then asked another tough question, asking Lanny 2016 about what he said about Clinton in 2008 when he was working for candidate Barack Obama against Hillary, saying that Clinton couldn’t be believed and that she adopted positions according to political calculus rather than sincere beliefs. The honest answer would have been, “Well, you understand this, George: Obama was paying me then, Hillary’s paying me know, just as the Clintons paid you once, and now ABC does.” Instead, Lanny II replied with a canned statement that didn’t address George’s question at all, and George let him get away with it. Why? Because he’s a hack? Because he’s dumb? Or because he’s in the tank for Hillary Clinton?

Another Ethics Alarms Mash-Up! Take The New York Times’ Exposé On Sen. Rubio’s Wife’s Driving, Add The Clintons’ Use Of Their “Charitable Foundation” As An Unethical Political Slush Fund, And You Get….

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

logo-mashupmonday

This!

From the Washington Free Beacon:

A little-known private foundation controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton donated $100,000 to the New York Times’ charitable fund in 2008, the same year the newspaper’s editorial page endorsed Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, according to tax documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.The Clinton Family Foundation, a separate entity from the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, has been the family’s vehicle for personal charitable giving since 2001.

It is funded directly by the Clintons and distributes more than $1 million a year to civic and educational causes.

The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is a charity affiliated with the newspaper that assists underprivileged New Yorkers. It is run by members of the New York Times Company’s board of directors and senior executives. The Times’ editorial board endorsed Clinton against Democratic challengers John Edwards and Barack Obama on January 25, 2008, writing that she was “more qualified, right now, to be president.”

Hmmmm… Continue reading →

Outrageous, Unprofessional, Unethical Judge Michael Cicconetti

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
Pepper spray in the face? Uh, that's not what we mean by "blind justice"...

Pepper spray in the face? Uh, that’s not what we mean by “blind justice”…

In Painesville, Ohio, Municipal Court Judge Michael Cicconetti decreed that Diamond Gaston, tried for assault for pepper-spraying another woman in the face, had to choose between spending a month in jail or getting pepper-sprayed in her face by the victim. Judge Cicconetti—the sly fox—had secretly had the pepper-spray replaced with a saline solution without telling Gaston, who was his victim. In the same week,  Cicconetti sentenced a woman who failed to pay a cab driver for a 30 mile trip to the choice of jail time or paying $100 restitution and walking the 30 miles she stole from the cabbie. This got him on all the cable news shows, so obviously it was a great idea.

Law Professor Jonathan Turley was so upset by these absurd sentences (and others he has condemned) that his blog post on the topic is (uncharacteristically) riddled with errors, as if he wrote it while screaming as tears blurred his eyes. Maybe he did. Unlike your host, Turley is usually reserved and understated, but this really got to him. Here: my view is substantially the same as his, so let’s give the professor his say (with a little editing): Continue reading →