He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. – Jesus
One of the standard features of Donald Trump’s massive political rallies has been the joyous chant, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” Perhaps not quite as blood-curdling as the chants at the rallies of Adolf Hitler and other murderous anti-Semites through the ages – “Kill the Jews!” – it was a reliable call for justice.
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What was Hillary Clinton’s unforgivable sin? As Secretary of State, she insisted upon sending and receiving potentially secret and top-secret emails on an unprotected server, brazenly flouting State Department regulations.
How did that work out? Clinton’s unsecured private server was found to have more than 100 emails containing classified information, including 65 Secret and 22 Top Secret documents.
Let us stipulate that what she did was not good, and though warned repeatedly, she pig-headedly continued using an unprotected server. Why did she insist upon using a private email account? Because she found it much easier for her to use than a secure government provided server, and because she would have had to carry around two separate phones.
Should Hillary have been locked up for these transgressions? Although she endured multiple Congressional hearings and a crescendo of public criticism, Hillary was never charged with a crime. But her terrible judgement did provide the high points for scores of Trump rallies over the years.
By cavalierly insisting upon using an insecure server, Hillary Clinton surely put our nation’s security at risk. Now we get to ask whether or not President Donald Trump not only committed the same sin, but some even greater sins.
Donald Trump's Transgressions
One of his most serious transgressions was taking dozens of cartons containing perhaps hundreds of Secret and Top-Secret documents, to his Mar-a-Lago estate when he left office in January 2021 – and then refusing to send more than a fraction of them to the National Archives for safe-keeping.
Despite his claims to the contrary, he had absolutely no right to possess these documents once he left office. Compounding his offense, they were stored in extremely insecure locations where even complete outsiders might have had access to them. These documents contained some of our nation’s most important security secrets, which were put at risk by Trump’s extreme negligence. In addition, the lives of many of our nation’s foreign spies might have been placed in jeopardy.
Trump also put our nation at risk by organizing and fomenting the January 6th attack on our nation’s Capitol, which might have had even more catastrophic results if had succeeded. For more than three hours, during which Vice President Mike Pence, and every U.S. Senator and Congressmember was forced to run for their lives, our commander-in-chief was AWOL.
Trump was also the first president in our nation’s history to refuse to accept the results of an election that he had lost. The peaceful accession of the next lawfully elected president is one of the pillars of our democracy. But to this day, Trump is still claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
So yeah, Hillary was a bad girl for refusing to use a secure server, but Donald was a very, very bad boy for his multiple sins. With the legal actions being taken against him by the Fulton County, Georgia DA, the federal Department of Justice and perhaps other governmental litigants, we may soon be hearing joyous cries of “Lock him up! Lock him up!”
