The Republi-CON 'Hillary Will/Will Not Be Indicted' Myths

"If you’ve spent any time inside the conservative information bubble, among the things you know is that not only did Hillary Clinton commit all manner of nefarious crimes with relation to the emails she sent and received as Secretary of State, but she will be indicted for those crimes soon, and that indictment will throw the 2016 to the Republican presidential nominee. If you inhabit the world outside that bubble, you may know that the chances of such an indictment are infinitesimal.

But conservatives hold on to the possible indictment like a life raft amid swelling seas, the one thing that can save them from the horror of a Clinton presidency. . .

Just to be clear, I’m not defending Clinton’s decision to set up her own email server. That was a violation of departmental policy, and she shouldn’t have done it. But that’s very different from saying it was a crime, or even that it jeopardized national security in some way (there’s been no evidence that Clinton’s server was hacked or that anyone even tried to hack it, unlike the State Department’s own systems, which are constantly targeted by hackers).

But if you’re a Republican pundit, you know that the idea of Hillary Clinton being led away in handcuffs is just too tantalizing for your audience to resist. . .

For the most part, the Clinton email story has been a disappointment to Republicans. They were desperately hoping that the emails would reveal some kind of ghastly malfeasance on Clinton’s part, some smoking gun that would make all Americans realize that she should never be elected president. When that turned out not to be the case, they pinned their hopes on the idea that she would just have to be charged with a crime eventually. . .

But having gone this far, they need to keep up appearances, and they also know that just talking about her emails serves to convince people that something scandalous must have happened. So they are laying the groundwork to argue, if and when she doesn’t get indicted, that it must only be because Barack Obama’s corrupt administration quashed the investigation and hid the truth from the public.

And down where the conservative rank and file get their information — the talk radio rants, the right-wing blogs, the breathless chain emails — these two contradictory ideas are both widely circulated. Clinton is about to be indicted, and Clinton won’t be indicted because the fix is in. The assumption in either case is that of course she committed crimes, even if no one can say exactly what they were. Because she’s Hillary Clinton, right? What more do you need to know?"

Read the Washington Post, Republicans know Hillary Clinton is not going to be indicted. They just can’t say so.