The Prosecution of Hillary Clinton
me
Posted on 4/12/2016, 12:22:49 PM by henkster
As a former prosecutor and now defense attorney, I’ve had a number of thoughts about Clinton’s case, which mostly deal with tactics and logistics and not so much with the actual evidence itself. For these thoughts, I put myself in the shoes of the U.S. Attorney who gets this case dumped in his lap. What, exactly, are you dealing with?
1. Your defendant, thanks to the very graft machine you are expected to prosecute, will have access to almost unlimited financial resources. Unless the FBI has identified all the shady “shell corporations” where Hillary has hidden her money, and you can get a Federal District Court judge to preliminarily freeze them pending prosecution, money will not be a problem in her defense. While I think the chances of asset seizure are doubtful, even if it could be done there are so many influential and powerful people who have staked so much on her presidency, they will continue to pay money for her defense.
2. Your legal opponents will be an all-star cast of the very highest powered criminal defense lawyers in the United States. They will compete with each other just for the honor and prestige of the defense in this case. They will be backed by completely partisan legal research efforts of all of the elite Ivy League law school professors. This will be a legal team that will make O. J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” look like a collection of third year law student interns at a big city public defender’s office.
3. The democrat controlled media/entertainment propaganda complex will go into overtime to spin this up as a “vast right wing conspiracy,” a politically motivated prosecution with no evidence behind it. They will play the “gender card,” since this is part of the Republican “war on women” to deny the first woman the white house. It will all be portrayed as orchestrated by Donald Trump, “misogynist in chief.” Whatever the PR line the Clinton defense team wants, the media will parrot endlessly.
4. You can expect to become the object of relentless personal ridicule by the entertainment wing of the propaganda complex. Jimmy Fallon, Clinton’s chief water-carrier, will spend a full minute of every night’s monologue belittling you in the public eye. Don’t forget the skits on SNL and the snide comments on “Weekend Update.”
5. All of this will be designed to shape juror perspectives in advance and bias them in her favor and against the prosecution. Even without that, it will be difficult to keep all of her admirers off the jury. In addition, this is not going to be an easy case for the average juror to wrap their heads around. It’s not Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a government building and murdered children. Jurors get that and aren’t sympathetic. This case is about a bunch of arcane e-mails going this way and that way, and money going that way and this way. It is an evidentiary labyrinth, in which the average juror can get lost. There is no visceral “you had me at hello” piece to this trial.
6. What are the odds this case would be filed before a District Court Judge that had been appointed by her husband? Or by 0bama? Or that covets an appointment to the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court, that could be done by the next President Clinton?
7. Your own confidence can be an issue; are you really sure your boss (Loretta Lynch) and her boss, Barack 0bama, have your back in all of this?
8. Then there is the timing of the trial itself. My first thought was that the case is so complex, that even if an indictment were filed today, it could not possibly be ready to try by November. But on further review, maybe it would behoove Clinton’s dream team of lawyers to push for a trial right away, and push you as the government to try the case early before you are ready. The poor presentation of a complex case dooms it to failure. In the meantime, as you stumble through a haphazard presentation of evidence, slogging away against the dogged defense of one half of her dream team, the other half of the dream team is watching you buy them time to prepare an iron-clad defense. In the meantime, the federal prosecutors are so busy hacking their way through the first line of defense, they are not prepared for what Clinton’s lawyers unleash on them. This was exactly the defense strategy carried out to perfection by O. J. Simpson’s lawyers, and if I were in charge of Clinton’s defense, I’d repeat it.
This case, as a criminal prosecution, has an entirely different dynamic than any other criminal prosecution. There is little question in my mind she committed many crimes with her server scheme. Proving it in Court is an entirely different matter, and those on this Forum who think it’s a slam dunk need to think again.
Yes. I saw henkster’s commentary.
It made me sad to think that an American would write something like that.