Internet, let me apologize. I know that I promised an article bashing Hillary Clinton after the article that bashed Donald Trump (which if you haven’t read I highly recommend that you do), but you know, I’m only human, more so I’m a college student with midterms and papers so, yeah, I copped out and "live thought" the final debate. Anyway, here we go. I used my nice little prelude in the Trump article so I’m just going to jump into it and look at some of the scandals regarding Hillary Clinton.

First let’s start with the whitewater scandal. Oh you’re not familiar? Let me give you the 411. So when the Clintons were living in Arkansas they got caught up in a little legal trouble. They invested and lost money in the Whitewater Development Corporation. No that’s not the scandal, that’s just poor investing. The scandal really is that Bill Clinton was accused of pressuring David Hale into providing an illegal loan to the Clinton’s partner in the Whitewater land deal. “Those selfish, self-centered, profit chasing bastards!!!!” I hear you say. Well you’ll be glad to hear that this did not avoid the proverbial “long dick of the law” (all credit to Superbad). No, six years of investigations carried out by three different prosecutors, and multiple congressional committees cracked down on this crooked power couple. And you know what? Insufficient evidence was found. “Well that’s because the system is broken and Donald Trump is going to fix it!” I hear you say. Well if that was the case then Donald not being found guilty in several lawsuits is the product of this same broken system, so pick one, either both are guilty or you can accept that both got off. As Max Weber would say, “Choose your God”.

Let’s move on to the sh*t-show that is Benghazi. So here’s what went down: In 2012, there was a coordinated attack against two U.S. government facilities by the members of the militant group Ansar al-Sharia. 4 Americans died. Now the crux of the accusation is that under Hillary’s leadership as the Secretary of State, these understaffed security posts allowed for the attack to be successful. Two things, first, this was the result of budget cuts that arose from a thoroughly uncooperative two party system. Second, given the attack was premeditated, the planning would have taken into account however much security there was. Unless you had all of Delta Force there and a Marine battalion, a few extra guards probably wouldn’t have been much of a deterrence because you know what? Its pretty easy to go find a poor, uneducated peasant boy, indoctrinate him with extremist propaganda and put a rifle in his hands because at the end of the day you don’t care if he lives or dies and you can go round up ten more just like him after he gets several .223 rounds pumped into his chest by security guards. Now this didn’t escape the eye of the law either. Eight congressional investigations came to the same conclusion that the State Department could have done more to increase security at the embassy, but not a single one of these found evidence of a single wrongdoing by Clinton.

The emails. The emails, the emails, the emails, the emails, the emails. Those f*cking emails. Let’s do this. So the scandal here is that she used a private email server and private email account for government emails. The use of a private email server requires prior approval, she never asked for it. She cites being technically inept as a reason to have all her emails in one place. This is a fine excuse for my aging grandmother who’s freaking computer password is her birthday and still can’t remember it. But for someone who’s supposed to be the shining example of women breaking barriers, that’s a pretty piss poor excuse, especially when you’re the Secretary of State in such a technologically advanced day and age. Finally, in a CNN interview (where all of the above is from by the way) she says, “Oh the whole situation is kinda fun”, no it isn’t…well apart from that risotto recipe in the emails. That’s fun, easy and impresses the hell out of people. So yeah, those are pretty awful excuses from a woman who said it all with a smile on her face. She blames this on the fact that the State Department issued Blackberrys couldn’t access two email accounts at the time (fact). So, she had two choices, send all emails through a state.gov address (legal) which leaves personal emails open to public FOIAs, OR send all emails through a personal account. Which by the way is legal but frowned upon. Oh, and FYI others who did this same thing that is kicking up such a shit storm: Colin Powell, Chris Christie (who is one of Trump’s main backers by the way), John Kerry, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, and Lisa Jackson. So, the emails really aren’t anything to get upset about, unless you’re ready to denounce all those other politicians too. HOWEVER, what goes deeper is the server issue. So, she had her own private server. What does this mean? Putting an email server in your own house is pretty complicated. Luckily for her it was the server that Bill used when he got out of office. Unluckily for her the server was probably crammed with porn too. Ultimately the server isn’t under US government security measures and so on and so forth, but considering how many times the Pentagon and other agencies have been hacked, I’m pretty sure that’s a non-issue.

Now there is a separate system for classified emails that is used when using the government email, we mentioned earlier. Hillary, being a big dick in the State Department, received classified emails. These emails didn’t go through the correct channels, breaking protocol and (well not really, see above link) putting them at risk. The FBI found 113 such emails. However, only three of them had the required classification markers and were not in the header of the email as was required. Now, while the FBI investigation found that Clinton and her staff were extremely careless (borderline incompetent in my humble opinion), they did not find anything that would support bringing criminal charges. So in the end, its not a great situation, but its by no means as bad as some would have you believe. Ultimately with the emails, it goes back to the fact that she is not the first politician to do it, and if you’re going to kick up a shit-storm about it, go denounce Chris Christie and Sarah Palin too.

OK, good, we have the emails done. Now let’s look at the Clinton Foundation. The controversy is about the conflict of interest by taking money from certain foreign governments. Algeria donated half a million dollars to the foundation but there is no evidence to support that the donation influenced State Department policy. BUT! There is a little issue with a donation from Russia. So, the scandal here is that while Clinton was Secretary of State, she oversaw the sale of a Uranium mine to Russia, while at the same time a foundation controlled by the mine’s chairman was making donations to the Clinton Foundation. Four separate donations coming to a total of $2.35 million. Let’s dive in. The Canadian chairman of the mining company that was sold to Russia, had also given money to Clinton foundation but instead of giving it directly he gave it through a Canadian affiliate of the Clinton Foundation, he didn’t disclose his name because he didn’t have to because that Canadian affiliate wasn’t subject to the disclosure act the Clinton Foundation signed with the Obama administration. To summarize, the law and the agreement both remain intact, but the spirit of it certainly was twisted. So, it looks much worse than it is. On top of it, Clinton wasn’t the only one who had to sign off on the deal, nine other federal agencies did too. So the suggestion of a pay for play scandal, fails to take into account all the other federal agencies. Essentially, it was all legal, just really poorly handled.

The email scandals and the above scandal both look bad, but the closer you look, the harder it is to find something wrong. Overall, I tried to be mean to Clinton in this article, but legally she’s not done anything wrong. Sure she’s a liar and manipulative, but legally she’s sound. And please, please go read the piece on Trump if you haven’t. Next week I’ll be comparing the two candidates but in the meantime here’s a takeaway. She may be a flip flopping politician who was once against gay rights and then for it, but she doesn’t have weak values or is inconsistent. She toes the party line, she is the establishment, she is party politics. Donald Trump on the other hand is an elitist who claims to be a man of the people, but he’d never admit one of the supporters at his rallies to one of his golf clubs unless they were working there. He is thoroughly against the establishment, and the GOP thinks they can reign him in and control him as a president, they won’t. He’s more of an independent than a Republican