Hillary Clinton’s Petard

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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“Why do I have to get involved with Putin? I have nothing to do with Putin. I’ve never spoken to him. I don’t know anything about him other than he will respect me. He doesn’t respect our president. And if it is Russia—which it’s probably not, nobody knows who it is—but if it is Russia, it’s really bad for a different reason, because it shows how little respect they have for our country, when they would hack into a major party and get everything. But it would be interesting to see—I will tell you this—Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

* * *

Those are the words with which Donald Trump turned back on Hillary Clinton’s campaign the jibes that it has been directing his way in respect of the emails that were either leaked or hacked from the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton camp is taking great umbrage at Mr. Trump’s comments — and trying to spin them as an invitation to attack our systems in search of private emails. “This,” said one of Mrs. Clinton’s aides, “has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent.”

That’s ridiculous. Mr. Trump quickly suggested that if the Russians have Mrs. Clinton’s missing emails, they should turn them over to the FBI. Which, of course, the Russians would not do. “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug,” Speaker Ryan’s spokesman said in a statement. “Putin should stay out of this election.” But through whom would Russia work, anyhow? The Democratic National Committee emails that started this whole contretemps were made public via Wikileaks, with whom the pro-Democratic Party press has been collaborating for years.

How does that compute for the Democrats who blame Mr. Putin? What about Edward Snowden, who is being sheltered in Russia by the regime that the Democrats are now gleefully quoting Paul Ryan as calling a global menace? Maybe the Kremlin will enlist Mr. Snowden in finding the missing Hillary Clinton emails. The Times would probably love it. “Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed,” it editorialized in 2014. “Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service.”

The truth is that when the emails that are leaked in the age of the Internet are America’s wartime secrets, such as battlefield secrets in a time when our troops are engaged in combat with a savage foe, the left is all too eager to work with the leakers and characterize them as “whistleblowers.” But when the messages being leaked include internal email traffic of the Democrats themselves, wires that show them maneuvering against Senator Sanders in a ghastly way, the Democrats are suddenly up in arms. Mr. Trump seems to have figured out the petard on which the Democrats have hoisted themselves.


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