Former President Bill Clinton told "The View" on Tuesday that he is open to talking with President Joe Biden about preemptively pardoning his wife, Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, Secretary of State and U.S. senator from New York.
The former president was discussing President-elect Donald Trump taking office on Jan. 20 and about fears of him going after political enemies during his second term, The Hill reported. Even though "Lock her up!" was a general theme during Trump's first presidential campaign, his Department of Justice did not go after Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email system as Secretary of State in the Obama administration.
Hillary Clinton was investigated by Obama's DOJ for her use of the private server, but she was cleared of wrongdoing by FBI Director James Comey.
"Do you think it would be wise of President Biden to preemptively pardon any potential targets? What about your wife, Hillary Clinton?" host Sunny Hostin asked the former president.
"I think if President Biden wanted to talk to me about that, I will talk to him about it, but I don't think I should be giving public advice on the pardon power," Bill Clinton said. "It's a very personal thing, but … I hope [Trump] won't do that."
Biden reportedly is considering blanket pardons for many political officials – such as former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute for Health and Infectious Diseases — even if they haven't been charged with breaking the law. After Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said there will be more pardons.
Democrats and the mainstream media have made widespread claims that Trump will be going after political enemies without much concrete evidence. Many on the left have speculated that because Trump was targeted by Biden's DOJ and Democrat district attorneys in Georgia and New York, he will be seeking retribution. But Trump has repeatedly maintained "my retribution will be success."
"They've got a problem with her because first, she didn't do anything wrong," Bill Clinton said. "Second, she followed the rules exactly as they were written. Third … remember how the emails were such a big issue in 2016? Trump's State Department found that Hillary sent and received exactly zero classified emails on her personal device. It was a made-up phone story."
Comey, though, said in 2016 of the roughly 30,000 emails that the FBI assessed during its investigation of Hillary Clinton, "110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were ‘up-classified' to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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