On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest squirmed when asked an uncomfortable question about his boss and the woman who just catastrophically failed to carry on his legacy. Before leaving office, would President Obama pardon Hillary Clinton? Earnest’s response: Maybe.
“The president has offered clemency to a substantial number of Americans who were previously serving time in federal prisons,” Earnest replied, deliberately keeping his phrasing as vague as possible. “And we didn’t talk in advance about the president’s plans to offer clemency to any of those individuals and that’s because we don’t talk about the president’s thinking, particularly with respect to any specific cases that may apply to pardons or commutations.”
While no charges have yet been filed against Clinton, it is possible that something might be coming down the line with the FBI now conducted three separate investigations that involve Clinton in some capacity. Not only is the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server re-opened, it is also currently investigating the Clinton Foundation and Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton’s closest aide and confidant, Huma Abedin. In fact, it was the latter investigation that resulted in the reopening of the email server probe, after the FBI found thousands of emails sent from the server on a device of sexting addict Weiner.
During the campaign, Donald Trump raised the stakes by threatening to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Clinton’s potentially illegal actoins, though the threat seems more likely to end up being an example of Trump’s often hyperbolic campaign rhetoric than a sincere campaign promise. Meanwhile, many have pointed out the possible parallels between an Obama pardon of Clinton and President Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon for any laws he might have broken while in office.
H/T NY Post.