By Jonathan F. Keiler<\/p>\n
At the conclusion of an article<\/a> on the State Department IG\u2019s findings that Hillary Clinton brazenly violated federal record-keeping statutes, National Review<\/em>\u2019s Andrew McCarthy asks:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are we to make of Mrs. Clinton\u2019s public posturing that of course<\/em> [emphasis in original] she is prepared to cooperate — and encourages her subordinates to cooperate — with government investigators?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The question is obviously rhetorical, but one problem with rhetorical questions is that we don\u2019t always really answer them, other than shrugging.\u00a0So allow me in this case to answer that question.\u00a0What we are to make of Mrs. Clinton is that she is an accomplished career criminal — and I mean that literally, not rhetorically.<\/p>\n Like a lot of accomplished career criminals Mrs. Clinton has committed so many high crimes and misdemeanors, and gotten away with them to boot, that we tend to forget (or ignore) past acts of lawlessness because the new ones keep on coming. And like skillful felons the world over, Mrs. Clinton takes full advantage of this very human inclination, by sloughing off past accusations as \u201cold news\u201d or the result of biases that have emerged through \u201cmisunderstandings.\u201d Anyone who has worked in criminal justice has seen this phenomenon, where repeat offenders get to know police, prosecutors and judges so well that law enforcement tires of them — maybe even comes to like them a bit — and so cut the career criminal a break. And the clever crook knows this tendency and plays upon it.\u00a0It\u2019s this dynamic that led to the development of \u201cthree strikes\u201d laws, so such crooks don\u2019t receive unearned or plainly manipulated sympathy.<\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s recent faux pas<\/em> <\/a>regarding the long-ago apparent suicide of Clinton confidant Vince Foster is an example of this process. Trump, as is his wont, made a poorly thought-out off-the-cuff remark suggesting that Foster was murdered, and that Clinton was behind it.\u00a0Since this is one crime that the Clintons probably did not commit, Trump\u2019s remark was foolish, since, like accusations about Obama\u2019s birthplace, it just gives the leftist media ammunition to belittle legitimate criticisms. But it was also understandable — Trump didn\u2019t claim the accusations were true, only that he was aware of them, and given we\u2019re talking about Hillary Clinton, well\u2026<\/p>\n But Trump needn\u2019t speculate about Foster\u2019s fate, nor should we. Rather than trying to pin Foster\u2019s death on Hillary, he ought to remind the public of her other crimes, and launch focused attacks on her documented and provable malfeasances, starting with her cattle futures trading windfall\/bribe.\u00a0Today, Hillary\u2019s cattle trading is usually mentioned casually as an indicator of how far back Hillary\u2019s corruption goes, but that crime (from 1978\/79) itself is worth revisiting in some detail.<\/p>\n Like most of Hillary\u2019s wrongdoing, she benefits from the fact that her schemes are complex, superficially boring, and often hard for the general public to understand. In that sense it\u2019s understandable that Trump fell into the trap of talking about the Foster case.\u00a0Murder and\/or suicide is comprehensible and sexy, trading livestock is not. That doesn\u2019t change the fact that Hillary\u2019s $100,000 trading windfall cannot reasonably be seen as anything but a criminal bribe.<\/p>\n Anybody that knows anything about trading commodities understands that what Hillary claims to have done — turn an initial $1000 investment in cattle futures into a $100,000 profit ten months later — is as a practical matter almost impossible even for the most skilled commodity operator, and absolutely impossible for a neophyte such as Hillary was.\u00a0My father traded commodities for decades, was very smart, reasonably good at it, and even ran an advisory service for a time.\u00a0He managed to stay ahead but not by much.\u00a0Three quarters of commodity traders lose money, the vast majority inexperienced traders like Clinton.<\/p>\n An inexperienced blackjack player would have a much, much easier time turning a $1000 stake at a casino into $100,000, than would a similarly situated person in futures trading, though of course such a blackjack run would require almost perfect play.\u00a0What Hillary claims to have done would have required divine intervention, or a criminal scheme. Since I am fairly sure the Almighty is not on her side, we need to go with the latter.<\/p>\n After the trading scheme became public in the 1990s, Clinton and her defenders tried to explain the windfall away as a combination of Hillary\u2019s native intelligence, luck, and good advice.\u00a0But a scholarly paper put out in 1994 by theJournal of Economics and Finance<\/em> calculated that the odds<\/a> of gaining such a profit in ten months under conditions at the time, and giving the investor the benefit of the doubt, at 31 trillion to 1.\u00a0By way of comparison, the odds that the blood detected on O.J. Simpson\u2019s notorious glove (found after the murders at Simpson\u2019s estate), did not contain the blood of his victims is between 21 and 41 billion chances in one<\/a>. Thus, at least by this metric, it is far, far more likely that O.J. Simpson is innocent of the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, than it is that Hillary\u2019s cattle futures profit was not illegal. Even a bored, inattentive and not very bright electorate can understand that. And I understand that some people never will understand it no matter what, which is why O.J. walked.<\/p>\n The futures trading incident is also notable in that after the scheme became a legal and political issue, Hillary\u2019s cool reaction to it proved to be her coming out party as an effective mob boss who could handle herself under intense pressure and scrutiny.\u00a0She was widely praised<\/a> in the liberal press for being forthcoming and unflappable, while also giving no ground, a pattern that would repeat itself again and again, up to the present.<\/p>\n Hillary\u2019s cattle futures bribery scheme dates back to the same time frame as she began her other introductory criminal scam, Whitewater.\u00a0From there<\/a> came the Rose Law Firm billing records scandal (related to Whitewater), Travelgate, Hillary\u2019s libels against victims of her husband\u2019s predatory sexual behavior, Troopergate (related to Bill\u2019s dalliances), the White House\u2019s missing furniture, the friendly mortgage for the house in Chappaqua, a carpet-bagging Senate run, the Clinton Foundation, pay for play speeches, Benghazi, and the email scandals.\u00a0(I may have missed one or two others.)<\/p>\n It is a breathtaking history of scandal and criminality that might make Tony Soprano blush, and is certainly the envy of real life mob bosses cooling their heels in penitentiaries jail across the nation.\u00a0Hillary simply has almost all the traits (and history) of a successful mob boss, including a close knit group of loyal confederates who operate under a code of omerta<\/em>.<\/p>\n Trump has many flaws, but to my knowledge he is not an outright criminal, much less a mob boss.\u00a0Trump needn\u2019t concern himself with Vince Foster.\u00a0He does need to thoughtfully and aggressively hone his attack<\/a> on Hillary\u2019s enduring criminality. There is plenty to work with.<\/p>\n