Ethics & Religion
August 4, 2016
Column #1,823
An Indictment of Hillary Clinton
By Mike McManus

In his Fox News interview with Hillary Clinton on Sunday, Chris Wallace played a video of her saying, "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified materials."

Wallace then stated, "After a long investigation, FBI Director James Comey said none of those things that you told the American people were true."

She replied, "Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I've said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails."

Expecting that, Wallace played another video of an exchange between Comey and Rep. Trey Gowdy, Chair of a House Committee on Benghazi, in which he asserted, "Secretary Clinton said nothing was marked classified on her emails either sent or received. Was that true?"

Comey replied, "That's not true."

The Washington Post awarded Four Pinocchios to Hillary Clinton for her dishonest statements, its worst possible rating.

Another area of unethical action has been the funding of the Clinton Foundation, which has raised $2 billion since it was organized by Bill Clinton after he left the White House. In addition to foundation donations, Bill and Hillary have been paid huge sums personally. He made 73 speeches since 2002 and was paid $104 million and Hillary has delivered 15 such speeches. She disclosed that she and her husband have been paid $25 million for speeches just since January, 2014.

Much of Bill's fund-raising was during Hillary's four years as Secretary of State. A new book by Peter Schweizer, "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich." It asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Foundation or Mr. Clinton "received favors from Mrs. Clinton's State Department in return," the New York Times reported.

Last May it was revealed that $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments came from major corporations, universities and such countries as Thailand. They was listed internally as "revenue" rather than donations.

Bernie Sanders regularly asked Hillary to release copies of her speeches to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, for $250,000 to $500,000 each. She refused.

Russia hacked into the computers of the Democratic National Committee, and released thousands of emails showing top leaders helping Hillary beat Sanders. This week the four top DNC staffers all resigned, as did its Chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Another area of concern is that Hillary will be a "champion" of abortion, if elected, according to Dawn Laguens, VP of Planned Parenthood. "She's hands down, the strongest nominee we've seen on women's health and rights."

In 1976 Congress passed the "Hyde Amendment," named for Rep. Henry Hyde, that blocked all federal funds for abortion. For 40 years Democrats accepted Hyde. Neither Presidents Clinton nor Obama have tried to reverse it. However, Hillary says if elected she will try to repeal Hyde and force taxpayers to fund abortions. Less than a decade ago she said, "Abortions should be safe, legal and rare - and I mean rare." Now she says, "Let's repeal laws like the Hyde Amendment."

By contrast, Donald Trump has promised to defund Planned Parenthood, which received $528 million federal funding, none of which is supposed to be spent on PP's 327,000 abortions (nearly half of America's 730,000 abortions in 2011 - down from 1.4 million in 1990). The House passed a PP defunding bill in recent months, but it did not pass the Senate.

Religious liberty is also being dumped by the Democrats. The president's former head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldblum said religious liberty is incompatible with sexual liberation. Her solution: "Gays win. Christians lose." She said she has a hard time "coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win."

Indeed, the Obama Administration has tried to force all employers to not only give free birth control, but drugs that kill babies in the womb. Now they are calling for genderless bathrooms, special treatment for transgenders, gay sex ed, gay history, etc. "Americans finally see the ideology for what it is: fiercely and proudly intolerant," says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Finally, the DNC Platform calls for free college tuition, universal pre-school and other goodies - mostly paid for by raising taxes on the rich and corporations.

Last week I wrote "An Indictment of Donald Trump." This is "An Indictment of Hillary Clinton."

Americans face a horrendous choice for President. One candidate is unfit and the other untrustworthy.
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Copyright (c) 2016 Michel J. McManus, a syndicated columnist and past president of Marriage Savers. For previous columns go to www.ethicsandreligion.org. Hit Search for any topic.