North: consists of the Clintons getting entities to contribute more money to charitable causes
If that's what they were doing, then why did the money stream only exist while HRC was either Secretary of State or expected to be President?
The money disappeared the moment she lost. These groups didn't think about "charity" before.
North: no... nefarious benefit to the Clintons ever being demonstrated.
The money was used to give Clinton insiders jobs between political appointments and to create the same sort of influence that a Billionaire gets.
This was not a politician lining their pockets, it was a politician getting the influence of Bill Gates to fund their own interests.
North: ...provable facts...
I've only put down provable facts. I have admitted it was legal, I'm saying it was also obviously and openly corrupt.
Most people don't sweat the fine details. When the Clintons repeatedly and openly do this they figure out the system is fixed.
In many ways Trump is the result of the Clintons. If Blue is fine with HRC selling pardons and collecting Billions from Russia and the Saudis then that's the ethical standard.
North: ...billions ... requires you loop in the foundation which was regularly audited and found to be above board.
No, it was found to be "legal", as in, "we can't prove anything illegal in court".
The Husband of the Secretary is State is accepting Billions of dollars from states She deals with professionally. This money is used to promote her political agenda and influence.
The entities that were giving the money don't normally do this. These entities entirely stopped giving money the moment she lost power.
All of this was "legal", meaning with marital communications being privileged we have to trust there's no connection. Much like kindergarteners accept that Santa exists.
Pointing to this and claiming "it was above board" takes us to willful ignorance. I fully admit everything that happened was not-provably-illegal-in-court, but that's not the line that most of the electorate uses to decide if there's a problem.
So if you're wondering why Team Red can be expected to back their guy even though the group chat was obviously illegal, a big part of that is we had the Clintons showcase for years just what Washington ethics looks like.
And we also had for that same period of time Team Blue declare in lockstep that this kind of thing should be ignored.
RE: speculative tea leaf reading about unsubstantiated crimes the Clintons are alleged to have committed to somehow
So we're supposed to pretend she wasn't caught (legally) selling pardons?
Marc Rich's wife gave a million or so dollars to HRC's campaign when she badly needed it. Bill gave Marc a pardon.
People as far to the Left as Jimmy Carter have pointed out that there was no reason for the pardon other than the money. And there was no reason for the money other than the pardon.
This didn't rise to the level of "provably illegal in court" which is apparently her personal ethical standard.
That's why the Clintons were constantly being investigated and also why we constantly found we didn't have enough evidence for a criminal conviction.
Yes, they're in the same barrel. But it will blow over until they constantly lie about it and/or continue to do this.
For this to be truly damaging we need a way to keep it in the news for months. So we'd need them to pretend it wasn't a big deal, have more news about it, find they're still doing it, and then have them pretend it's not a big deal again.
The bulk of HRC's damage wasn't in what she did but how she handled the aftermath.
My impression was that she couldn't tell the truth about what she'd done because it was something along the lines of "if I engage in criminal activity like selling pardons I need to be able to destroy the emails". So she was always trying to tell one more self serving lie which would in turn be found out to not be true and kept this in the news for months.
If your opponent is going to let you shoot fish in a barrel, then you continue to do so as long as they let you.
HRC let her email situation drag on for a long time. She'd give a self serving explanation one week which explained everything on the table with the strong implication that this was it. Then we'd have more put on the table and she'd repeat the process.
It was like wanting to be merciful about removing your dog's tail so you'll take it off an inch at a time.
North: consists of the Clintons getting entities to contribute more money to charitable causes
If that's what they were doing, then why did the money stream only exist while HRC was either Secretary of State or expected to be President?
The money disappeared the moment she lost. These groups didn't think about "charity" before.
North: no... nefarious benefit to the Clintons ever being demonstrated.
The money was used to give Clinton insiders jobs between political appointments and to create the same sort of influence that a Billionaire gets.
This was not a politician lining their pockets, it was a politician getting the influence of Bill Gates to fund their own interests.
North: ...provable facts...
I've only put down provable facts. I have admitted it was legal, I'm saying it was also obviously and openly corrupt.
Most people don't sweat the fine details. When the Clintons repeatedly and openly do this they figure out the system is fixed.
In many ways Trump is the result of the Clintons. If Blue is fine with HRC selling pardons and collecting Billions from Russia and the Saudis then that's the ethical standard.
Slade: Isn’t Team Red supposed to be an improvement over Team Blue?
If you mean "throw the rascals out" then the party out of power is always an improvement.
If you mean "has better ethics" then "no". BSDI.
If you mean "economic policy" then Team Red got rid of their economic sanity wing so still "no". Also extra negative points for the economic chaos.
If you mean "war in Israel" then I'd say "yes".
If you mean "war in Ukraine" then I'd say "no".
North: ...billions ... requires you loop in the foundation which was regularly audited and found to be above board.
No, it was found to be "legal", as in, "we can't prove anything illegal in court".
The Husband of the Secretary is State is accepting Billions of dollars from states She deals with professionally. This money is used to promote her political agenda and influence.
The entities that were giving the money don't normally do this. These entities entirely stopped giving money the moment she lost power.
All of this was "legal", meaning with marital communications being privileged we have to trust there's no connection. Much like kindergarteners accept that Santa exists.
Pointing to this and claiming "it was above board" takes us to willful ignorance. I fully admit everything that happened was not-provably-illegal-in-court, but that's not the line that most of the electorate uses to decide if there's a problem.
So if you're wondering why Team Red can be expected to back their guy even though the group chat was obviously illegal, a big part of that is we had the Clintons showcase for years just what Washington ethics looks like.
And we also had for that same period of time Team Blue declare in lockstep that this kind of thing should be ignored.
And the court case has started: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/27/judge-hearing-signal-case-trump
North: in response to genuine, convicted and materially factual right wing crimes.
I was responding to your comparison, "teh emailz” and then I was responding to your claims that the pardons were "unsubstantiated".
North: the vast majority of their alleged crimes exist, overwhelmingly, as a matter of right wing spin...
I already agreed that what she did wasn't a crime if your line is "provable in court".
That doesn't change that She/They were the most openly corrupt politician(s) of their generation, to the tune of Billions of dollars.
Adding a reporter to a group chat (or even having the chat), hits the radar as shear incompetence. That's a problem, I'm not defending it.
I'm not sure it's useful to call it "illegal" when we've already made the decision that we're going to tolerate open corruption.
RE: speculative tea leaf reading about unsubstantiated crimes the Clintons are alleged to have committed to somehow
So we're supposed to pretend she wasn't caught (legally) selling pardons?
Marc Rich's wife gave a million or so dollars to HRC's campaign when she badly needed it. Bill gave Marc a pardon.
People as far to the Left as Jimmy Carter have pointed out that there was no reason for the pardon other than the money. And there was no reason for the money other than the pardon.
This didn't rise to the level of "provably illegal in court" which is apparently her personal ethical standard.
That's why the Clintons were constantly being investigated and also why we constantly found we didn't have enough evidence for a criminal conviction.
Yes, they're in the same barrel. But it will blow over until they constantly lie about it and/or continue to do this.
For this to be truly damaging we need a way to keep it in the news for months. So we'd need them to pretend it wasn't a big deal, have more news about it, find they're still doing it, and then have them pretend it's not a big deal again.
The bulk of HRC's damage wasn't in what she did but how she handled the aftermath.
My impression was that she couldn't tell the truth about what she'd done because it was something along the lines of "if I engage in criminal activity like selling pardons I need to be able to destroy the emails". So she was always trying to tell one more self serving lie which would in turn be found out to not be true and kept this in the news for months.
It's not the crime, it's the coverup.
If your opponent is going to let you shoot fish in a barrel, then you continue to do so as long as they let you.
HRC let her email situation drag on for a long time. She'd give a self serving explanation one week which explained everything on the table with the strong implication that this was it. Then we'd have more put on the table and she'd repeat the process.
It was like wanting to be merciful about removing your dog's tail so you'll take it off an inch at a time.
It's not the crime, it's the cover up.
Obama described this as "political malpractice". That's a good description. She managed to constantly look guilty of a cover up for a long time.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/hillary-clinton-email-timeline/index.html
3. Using a network that hackers can hack.