Trump: "Why wasn't Hillary charged?"

Why wasn’t Hillary Clinton indicted? Here’s why.

By Glenn Kessler

Washington Post

Trump:

Why wouldn’t “Deranged Jack Smith” look at “Hillary’s 33,000 emails that she deleted and acid washed,” he wrote in a post on June 13 and again on June 16. “CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP - THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!” he posted on June 5. 

Trump’s allies have echoed the comparisons in hundreds of social media postings as they suggest there is a two-tiered justice system.

In a speech at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club the evening of his arraignment, Trump was more expansive, making many false claims about materials found on the private email server Clinton maintained as secretary of state. As usual, Trump mixes partial facts and invented assertions into a stew of false equivalence. Let’s try to untangle it.

“Hillary Clinton set up an illegal private server in her basement....with the deliberate intention of violating public information law so she could hide her pay-for-play scandals at the Clinton Foundations or whatever.”

This is fiction. FBI interviews revealed that the arrangement came about because Clinton, a technophobe who, according to aides, never learned how to use a desktop computer, did not want to give up her BlackBerry device. Her preference for a personal email account was not against the rules but it was discouraged.

At the same time, to the chagrin of other agencies in the U.S. government, the State Department before Clinton’s arrival had a lax security posture that often relied on unclassified email systems. As the Fact Checker disclosed in 2016, many intelligence officials believed there were serious shortcomings in how State handled sensitive communications.

There is no evidence of any “pay-for-play” scandal at the Clinton Foundation. The Washington Post in 2015 revealed that Bill Clinton was paid at least $26 million in speaking fees by companies and organizations that are also major donors to the foundation. 

Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits, briefly put the Clinton Foundation, a large public charity, on its “watch list” because it had an “atypical business model” but then in 2016 rated it as of “low concern,” with a four-star rating, its highest.

By contrast, Trump in 2019 was ordered by a judge to pay $2 million for misusing funds in the tax-exempt Trump Foundation....