Why Bill Isn’t Worried About a Hillary Indictment

BY EDWARD KLEIN / OCTOBER 27, 2015

Now that Hillary has aced the first Democrat debate and the Benghazi hearing—and Joe Biden has taken himself out of the race—many people believe that the only thing standing in the way of her securing the Democratic nomination is the looming prospect of an indictment by the Justice Department.

Bill Clinton doesn’t agree.

According to a source close to the Clintons, Bill says he isn’t worried that Hillary’s handling of sensitive national security documents on her private e-mail system will doom her candidacy.

“Bill is a strategic political thinker and, no matter what happens, he doesn’t believe that voters will take this case seriously,” the source tells ED KLEIN CONFIDENTIAL.

“Bill says that even if Hillary is indicted, and even if she has to plead to some charge, the voters won’t turn against her,” the source continues. “Indeed, in Bill’s view, the voters will get behind her like they did when he was impeached. They will see it as a political witch-hunt.

“Anyway, that’s his strategic thinking. Obviously, Bill hopes and believes this thing will go away.”

It turns out that Bill’s optimism may not be misplaced.

For instance, Anne M. Tompkins, the highly respected prosecutor who nailed General Petraeus for sharing top-secret documents with his lover, has come out in public and said there is no comparison between the Petraeus and Hillary cases.

“As the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, I oversaw the prosecution of Gen. Petraeus, and can say, based on the known fact, this comparison has no merit,” Tompkins writes.

Other experts that I’ve talked to come up with extenuating circumstances that would get Hillary off the hook.

“The law says before you can be charged with obstruction of justice or perjury, prosecutors have to show that it was purposeful conduct and that a person did nothing to correct his or her error when they found out about it,” says former New Jersey prosecutor Robert Bianchi.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch has assigned a team of 8 lawyers, led by top-flight prosecutors Elizabeth Shapiro and Marcia Berman, to work with the FBI in determining whether Hillary violated several laws, including the Federal Records Act, the Freedom of Information Act, federal breach of security acts, obstruction of justice, and perjury.

But the experts I talked to say that before Attorney General Lynch indicted Hillary she would certainly want a very high level of proof against someone running for president.

“The prosecutors and the FBI have wide discretion,” former prosecutor Bianchi points out. “Even if they believe that technically Hillary Clinton committed a crime, they can make a determination that their proof is not solid enough to prove it before a jury of twelve people.

”What’s more, prosecutors don’t just bring charges against people unless they can prove ethically and with moral certainty that the government can prove each element beyond a reasonable doubt. And FBI doesn’t take chances in bringing