Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has no conscience or concept of right versus wrong, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in an exclusive interview on Monday with Breitbart News.
“There is no such thing as an internal red flag for the Clintons,” Priebus said when asked about the revelation from the forthcoming Peter Schweizer book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” that found the Clintons hooked up a gold mining contract in Haiti for Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham.
Priebus said, “There is nothing, no ‘maybe I shouldn’t do this’ moment.”
When it comes to helping out her brother on a sweet deal in the Caribbean—and the fact that the State Department and the place that she’s actually the head of was part of getting that deal done, you’d think that someone would say—especially a lawyer and she’s a lawyer right? You’d think that someone would say that maybe there’s a conflict of interest here.
Most lawyers can’t represent both sides of the debate, right? If they do, they’re going to have a very hard time keeping their bar license. She doesn’t have that kind of apparent ability to judge where something could cross the line into cronyism. That’s why. It doesn’t matter whether you go back to the 90s, or you go back to 2012 with her brother, or whether you’re talking about her private email system, or whether you’re talking about soliciting money from foreign countries—which, while by the way, you’re the secretary of state. Who knows why you’re hiding all this stuff? But she doesn’t seem to feel there’s a line that can’t be crossed.
About the email scandal—where Clinton set up a private email account and server system at her home in seeming violation of State Department policies—Priebus laid out for Breitbart News the major questions that she has yet to answer and that she needs to answer.
“The first thing I’d want to know is why she did it,” Priebus said when asked what questions he has for Clinton.
So, number one, why did you do it? What were you trying to hide by having a secret server and email system? Why would you risk the security of the United States in order to set up a private email system in order to hide your communications, and why would you risk the lives of other people by doing such a thing?
And lastly, what is it about yourself that you believe you’re unique and ought to do something like this that risks the security of the United States? So, I think this is just the very beginning of unfortunately a very bad situation not just for the country, but it’s a bad situation for the security of America. It will injure her politically, but the point of all of this is it’s bad for our country.
Clinton has not done any interviews since the scandal broke—and ran away from TMZ when a reporter for the online outlet approached her at the airport. Priebus said it’s not fair that Clinton hasn’t had to answer any of the questions that any other person would when they would find themselves in such a situation.
“Obviously she’s trying to avoid dealing with the fallout of the emails, but I think it comes to the point though where she looks at herself as being above the standards that normal people have to live under; she’s above the standards that this other ambassador had to live under,” Priebus said.
She’s flying in the face of the standards that she agreed to uphold when she was sworn in as secretary of state, because she probably doesn’t actually believe she was going to be held accountable when she created this situation. Also, the Clintons have spent a lifetime living above the rules and above the laws—and they’ve gotten away with it, mostly. So if you live in a world like that, and you’re not complying with things that everyone else is complying with, and you’re getting away with it, it makes sense that although this is very serious—and this is very serious—you have a couple people, Bill and Hillary Clinton, who are the last people to get the situation. So she may come to the table and answer some questions this week—I hope she does and I think she should—but most importantly, I think she has to answer to the American people as to why she would risk the national security of our country to protect herself from disclosure.
While some of the mainstream media has been aggressive in covering the scandal, Priebus noted that mainstream reporters should be trying to get her to answer the basic questions about this on camera for the American people. Priebus also suggested some questions about the Clinton Foundation—which has come under the microscope now—for reporters to ask her.
“While she is up at the podium, the press—I agree, it would be nice if someone other than TMZ would also be asking her these questions—she needs to be asked the question about her solicitation to the Clinton Foundation from foreign countries, many of whom don’t like us so much, and what did she compromise in those discussions,” Priebus said. “There’s all these Twitter pictures and Facebook pictures of her on her Blackberry on days where we don’t have a single email which is another question for the press to ask.”
About the surge in Democrats questioning Clinton—everyone from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), to David Axelrod, to Hilary Rosen, to Robert Gibbs, to many more left-wingers and Democrats have publicly hammered her over this scandal—Priebus said it shows the Democrats are having “second thoughts” about coronating her as their nominee. Priebus also said that Clinton is the Democratic candidate Republicans most want to face in 2016, since there’s so much dirt on her.
“I think they’re starting to have second thoughts about Hillary Clinton, and they’re seeing what others have been saying about her, like myself and folks on our side of the aisle, which is that Hillary Clinton is exactly the person we want to be running against in 2016,” Priebus said.
It’s an endless supply of issue for us to talk about when it comes to Hillary Clinton in 2016. I think Democrats are sitting around the table over at the DNC and starting to wonder whether or not it’s a very good idea to hitch their trailer to a vehicle that’s running low on air in the tires. It’s a dangerous place for them to be. They’d certainly much rather be in our position where, while we have a little bit of drama and some intrigue, I’d much rather have what we have than be hitching our entire lives to the Hillary Clinton operation.
Priebus continued by noting that the message about the distinction between the variety of Republican candidates from which voters can choose in 2016 and Clinton, is that Clinton has shown herself to have no regard for the rules and laws of this country.
“What you’re seeing from Hillary Clinton is that they have no limits to how they will use and leverage power that they amass from no matter where they amass that power,” said Priebus.
That’s clearly not a place where Americans, whether they’re Republican or Democrat, see this country going. What I think you saw, when we see what’s happening with regard to these emails and the Clinton Foundation, is that they believe they are above the law. They believe they are not bound by the rules that normal people are bound by and that clearly that’s not going to be good for America. What we’re trying to offer this country is a choice of many different people that people can have an opportunity to participate in and give us a better place and a better direction that we’re going to head into.
Priebus also questioned how President Obama could have said—as he did in a Sunday interview with CBS News—that he first learned about Clinton’s private email system “the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.”
“The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency, which is why my emails, the BlackBerry I carry around, all those records are available and archived,” Obama said in an interview with CBS News’s Bill Plante. “I’m glad that Hillary’s instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed.”
The White House, through Press Secretary Josh Earnest, walked that back on Monday—admitting that yes, in fact, Obama did email with Clinton on the private email address.
“The president, I think as many people expected, did, over the course of his first several years in office, trade emails with his secretary of state,” Earnest said, adding that the amount of emails was “not large.”
“The point is the president did email Secretary Clinton. I assume that he recognized the email address that he was emailing back to,” Earnest said.
Priebus said that no matter how anyone looks at this element of the Clinton email scandal, it’s not good for Clinton—or for Obama. Priebus said:
She had to have [emailed Obama]. Josh Earnest today actually admitted that the president emailed Hillary Clinton on her private account. This is one of the most interesting points, right? Is the president and his people not telling the truth as to how often he emailed with Hillary Clinton as far as using this private email account? He’s probably never emailed her at an official State Department account, and did he ever think why she’s not using an official State Department account when he’s emailing her, which is another logical step to take for questioning on that regard?
Then, if the president really didn’t email her a whole lot other than once or twice—I don’t know what the amount they’re claiming that the president emailed Hillary—but there’s another piece to this. If it turns out that the president only actually emailed Hillary a couple times on this private email account, you’d be surprised that the president actually didn’t stay in closer contact with his secretary of state of the United States. It’s pretty amazing to me that that would be the case. So my point is no matter how you slice and dice this entire side issue, it really does potentially tell you a lot about what has been going on in the White House which has a scary potential conclusion.
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