OPINION:
Last week the exigent news story was all about the conservative crack-up, which pleased me. I wrote a book titled “The Conservative Crack-Up” many moons ago, though I had a lot more facts in my book than you will find in all the news reports that appeared last week. Moreover, my crack-up had a happier ending for conservatives than the crack-up predicted last week for contemporary conservatives. In brief, the wisenheimers of the media were predicting that Donald Trump, having snagged the Republican nomination, was coming to Washington in a matter of days to burn down Republican National Headquarters and take Republican leaders prisoner, most significantly House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Now let me make my own prediction. Nothing of the kind will take place. Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan will hold a noncommittal meeting. The silly season will continue for weeks with more and more Republicans throwing in with the Republicans’ presumptive nominee. Then as we approach the Republican National Convention ever more Republicans will come on board the national ticket, and they will get on with the scheduled elections. There will be fireworks, but nothing like a conservative crack-up. Journalists, control yourselves. Democrats, subside. Everyone take a look at the Democratic contest for a change. More specifically, take a look at the storm clouds gathering over Hillary the Inevitable.
Last week the FBI’s investigation entered a critical phase all of a sudden. Ever since late last year I have been writing that the investigation of Hillary was a very serious matter. Mostly I have been ignored, but then I was ignored when, in this column last July, I took the Trump campaign seriously.
This investigation by the FBI could end her candidacy and lead to a stretch in the calaboose for her and her aides. Even her lovable lug of a hubby is not exempt. Last week we heard that her aides have already been interviewed. That ought to enlighten the friends of Huma Abedin as to why the sultry smile has left her lovely face in recent days. Now the FBI is about to make Hillary’s busy schedule even busier. She will be interviewed shortly.
The FBI’s investigation began to bear fruit when Bryan Pagliano, Hillary’s information-technology whiz, was given immunity in exchange for his cooperation. My spies tell me Mr. Pagliano has been much more cooperative than Webb Hubbell was 18 years ago when he was granted immunity by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, then investigating yet another Clinton scandal. Mr. Pagliano, if he is prudent, will not want to follow Hubbell’s path to prison.
Now we know that “Guccifer” has made the long trek from Romania, where he was jailed for such violations as hacking famous people’s emails, among them those of Sidney Blumenthal, the oddball confidant of Hillary. Guccifer is in reality Marcel Lehel Lazar, an unemployed Romanian taxi driver who spent his days until arrested by the authorities sitting in his underwear at home, hacking the famous and sending their emails around the globe. It is because of this genius that the whole American political world knows about Hillary’s “homebrew server.” She insists that no state secrets were revealed. Yet the FBI has questioned Guccifer, and last week we heard that Guccifer reported to NBC News that in hacking Hillary’s server, “It was like an open orchid on the Internet. There were hundreds of folders.” Hillary’s day of reckoning comes ever closer.
Last week, of a sudden, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate whose candidacy the experts doubted for months, became the unchallenged Republican nominee with months to go before the party’s convention. Is it possible that Hillary after months of campaigning against a 74-year-old socialist for the Democratic nomination will, of a sudden, have leaks from the FBI to contend with? Has the process already begun? Will she make it to the Democratic Convention? And, incidentally, the wisenheimers call Mr. Trump unpredictable. What about Hillary, or Hillary and Bill?
The smart money says the Clintons are too smart to allow such a freak event as Hillary’s hacked emails to deny her the nomination. Yet I have been writing about the Clintons for years and I have many memories of the Clintons’ surprisingly goofball scandals. In my 2007 book titled familiarly “The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President’s Life After the White House,” I revealed that in the dark of the night the boy president would have “phone sex” with Monica Lewinsky on an unsecure White House telephone. Foreign governments were listening, their tape recorders whirring. If Bill could be so stupid, then why would we think that Hillary was any smarter in the age of the Internet?
Stories of the FBI’s mounting investigation are circulating in political circles now. If somehow Hillary is elected to the presidency, rumors of Bill’s “phone-sex” taped by French, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies could circulate again. The tapes could be used for blackmail. Does the American electorate really want to hazard four more years of the Clintons?
• R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is editor-in-chief of The American Spectator. He is author of “The Death of Liberalism,” published by Thomas Nelson Inc.
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