Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Accusers Who Can't Read

Oh, this is hilarious. Accusers of Hillary Clinton are saying that this email thing is a violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and that her violation of it is particularly heinous because she herself voted for the bill. The passage in the legislation which they claim she violated reads,

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

They obviously don’t see the flaw in their reasoning, but do you? Right. Of course you do, because your IQ is higher than room temperature. She didn’t “alter, destroy, mutilate, conceal, cover up, falsify, or make a false entry” in any record because she made entries in her own server rather than in the official servers. She did not make entries in any official record, false or otherwise.

Mrs. Clinton is not accused of corrupting or entering false data into any public record; the accusation is that se simply didn’t use the public record at all. That may or may not be a problem; I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t really care. There are issues far more important about which we should be concerned.

Sarbanes-Oxley, in any case, is a piece of legislation passed in 2002 which set standards for public accounting firms, and dealt primarily with accounting standards, so it had nothing whatever to do with the government or with correspondence procedures for anyone, government or otherwise.

I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton, but this is not only a tempest in a teapot; it’s not even a real tempest, and the teapot seems to be missing.

1 comment:

  1. It's typical Clinton - asking forgiveness after rather than permission before, obfusticating, procrastination, releasing as little information as possible, bending the spirit of the law (and perhaps the letter).

    Is it wrong? Maybe, I'm no legal scholar. It might be, it might not be. But it certainly doesn't pass any smell test, and reinforces any negative perception that the Clintons play fast and loose and may have something to hide.

    ReplyDelete