John Hayward:
The FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton’s potential violations of the Espionage Actwith her private email server were “angered” by President Obama’s attempt to defend her on national television, the New York Times reports.
“I don’t think it posed a national security problem,” Mr. Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” He said it was a mistake for Mrs. Clinton to use a private email account when she was secretary of state, but his conclusion was unmistakable: “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”
Those statements angered F.B.I. agents who have been working for months to determine whether Ms. Clinton’s email setup had in fact put any of the nation’s secrets at risk, according to current and former law enforcement officials.
Investigators have not reached any conclusions about whether the information on the server had been compromised or whether to recommend charges, according to the law enforcement officials. But to investigators, it sounded as if Mr. Obama had already decided the answers to their questions and cleared anyone involved of wrongdoing.
The White House quickly backed off the president’s remarks and said Mr. Obama was not trying to influence the investigation. But his comments spread quickly, raising the ire of officials who saw an instance of the president trying to influence the outcome of a continuing investigation — and not for the first time.
If we weren’t so numb to lawlessness and politicized bureaucracy from seven years of Obama scandals, this would be a national outrage. The President just tried to influence the outcome of a criminal investigation, on behalf of a powerful Democrat politician. Of course, he loves to insert himself into politically useful criminal matters, while having nothing to say about politically damaging ones, such as sanctuary-city murders by illegal aliens.
Outrage requires at least a pinch of surprise, and Obama has so numbed the American people to corruption and the lawless exercise of power that it’s not surprising to watch him influence an active FBI investigation. As the Times notes later in its article, Obama made similar thoughtless – and, as it turned out, incorrect – comments when former CIA director David Petraeus was under investigation. Petraeus did have to face the music, but Obama’s politicized Justice Department arranged a misdemeanor plea bargain for him… even though he demonstrably lied to FBI agents during the investigation.
The rest
Obstruction of justice?
@kitt: You can add violating the Logan Act to that now.