Tomorrow is the only trial Hillary Clinton will ever face for her crimes.
She will never be dragged into a court of law. Not just for the reason Andy McCarthy spelled out regarding her classified e-mail crimes – because a trial would expose the president’s own misdeeds. Even on the pay-for-play foundation, some minions might – someday – face legal consequences, but Hillary herself will skate. She’s protected, in the mafia sense.
Nor would a Senate trial convict her, if it were to come to that, rendering impeachment pointless. So long as the Democrats hold at least one-third of the Senate, it will never vote for her removal from office, no matter what she’s done in the past or does in the future. Literally, no matter what real-world action she takes – arresting David Bossie, shutting down Breitbart, closing churches that won’t perform gay marriages. I’d still like to think she wouldn’t try any of that – or at least that she wouldn’t be able to find anyone willing to do it on her order. But if she did, it is a metaphysical certitude that she would get at least 34 Democratic senators to vote against her removal from office. After seeing what’s happened over the past eight years, to suggest otherwise is delusional.
That leaves Tuesday. All the arguments offered here and elsewhere about Trump’s low character and lack of fitness for office are correct – but he’s not on trial. The central question for America’s 120 million or so jurors to consider tomorrow is whether to apply the law equally to all citizens, or to engage in jury nullification and reward Hillary’s criminality with a stint in the White House.
Like O.J., Hillary might well beat the rap. Her prosecutor is deeply unattractive and has done a poor job. And there are indeed millions of jurors committed to nullification. But unlike in O.J.’s case, Hillary’s “acquittal” by the voters would represent an important milestone in the erosion of the rule of law.
The election of this criminal wouldn’t definitively mark the end of the republic – life will go on, politicians will bicker, new iOS’s will be released. But it would be one of those turning points which a faction of future historians, in debates with their colleagues, would select as the end of the republic and the beginning of whatever it is that comes afterwards.
So, members of the jury, what say you?