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Mr. BABIN. Mr. Speaker, our Nation's top law enforcement officials took a very dangerous turn last week when they essentially rewrote the law for the well-connected and privileged in America. This should be deeply troubling to all ordinary Americans, both on the left and on the right.
For those of us who work hard every day, play by the rules, and live by the law, when we cross the line, it is the law that holds us accountable. But that standard of law does not seem to apply to the Clintons.
John Adams warned during the formation of our Constitution that we must be a nation of laws, not a nation of men. Undermining this founding principle for the privileged not only demonstrates poor judgment, it further erodes our trust in the institutions of government.
So it is left for us to now ask whether what we have come to is a nation of laws, or is it a government of the rich and powerful?
Do we have a Department of Justice or a department of ``just us''?
FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress to the many laws that former Secretary of State Clinton broke, acknowledging ``extreme carelessness'' while denying ``gross negligence,'' which by definition are one and the same.
Then, incredibly, Mr. Comey said that there was no need for prosecution. Therefore, the choice not to apply the law equally to Hillary Clinton is not only a major blow to public confidence and the rule of law and equal treatment under the law, it also suggests that the rule of law has become nothing more than a word game. It confirms everything that we hate about the current state of politics in our country.
The FBI basically just wasted millions of dollars to confirm that everything Secretary Clinton has been telling the American people is nothing but a bunch of lies, and it doesn't matter.
However, it has mattered greatly to far less powerful Americans in similar circumstances who have had their careers and their lives destroyed. Public servants and military servicemembers who are not in positions to hold private meetings with the Attorney General, as Mrs. Clinton's husband did just days before this decision, have been jailed, fined, and lost their jobs and their security clearances.
We may never know just how much damage was caused by Clinton's callous disregard for the law and our national security secrets. Were informants killed? Were they lost or compromised due to her negligence?
Do foreign intelligence services now retain tens of thousands of emails from her private, unsecured servers that can now be used against the United States or against her to the detriment of the United States of America?
We have an absolute duty to find out.
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