Is There Equal Justice in the US?

This article first appeared in New English Review.


Eric Holder, the corrupt former Attorney General under President Obama, is in the news this week calling on the DOJ and FBI to stonewall President Trump's call for transparency and public disclosure in connection with their efforts to derail the Trump presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton took her sour grapes tour to Harvard this week, where she received an insignificant award for being "transformative". (Hell, Hitler was transformative too. That's not necessarily a good thing.)

More than any two public figures I can think of, these two raise the question in my mind of whether there is equal justice in America.

We hear a lot of talk these days about equal justice, largely thanks to groups like Black Lives Matter. It is their contention that African Americans do not receive equal justice due to their high rates of incarceration and the greatly publicized shootings of black suspects by police. That's a complicated subject. Suffice to say I disagree with the position and tactics of BLM.

However, the public careers of Holder and Clinton have led me to conclude that there is one tier of justice for some and another tier for others.

Eric Holder is the man who, as a high ranking official in the DOJ, ramrodded the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich  around the normal procedure at DOJ right up to President Bill Clinton's desk. It was one of the most controversial pardons in history. We later learned that Bill Clinton had a "friendship" with Rich's ex-wife. The whole thing stunk, but there were no repercussions.

As attorney general, Holder reigned over Operation Fast and Furious, an ATF operation that allowed thousands of weapons to be bought in US gun stores by a straw purchaser then transported into Mexico without any notification to Mexican police or any surveillance or tracking. The goal was to later recover the weapons after shootings in Mexico and show that US-purchased weapons were responsible for much of the bloodshed in Mexico's drug and gang wars. Hence, the need for more gun control.

Holder repeatedly denied any knowledge of the operation before Congress. In my view, he committed perjury. As a former DEA agent who occasionally worked with ATF, I know that such an operation could never have been concocted by street agents in Arizona, as Holder and his minions led us to believe. Fast and Furious had to have been the work of the highest levels of the Justice Department. Any other explanation makes no sense. When then- head of DHS, Janet Napolitano, spoke at UCLA, I had the opportunity to tell her that personally and ask her point blank why she never demanded answers from Holder. Of course, I got a run-around and a scolding for rolling my eyes.

Then there is Hillary Clinton herself, the queen of the dual justice  system. This woman's entire life has been one scheme after another from the Rose Law Firm to Travelgate to the Clinton Foundation to Benghazi to her email scandal. Yet, she came so close to becoming president of the United States.

As secretary of state, Clinton and her underlings ignored pleas for enhanced security at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Then the inevitable happened. The consulate was attacked and the ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three others were killed while any effort at rescue was told to "stand down". Then came the cover up and the lies. It should have disqualified Clinton from any further public office.

Later, we learned that as  secretary of state, Clinton had disregarded the use of the department's secure system of communications, one I had to use when I was a DEA agent stationed overseas in Thailand and Italy. These were rules every last foreign service officer is well aware of. Yet, Clinton had her own "system" clearly designed to evade Congressional oversight and later historians. It had all the security of a personal cooking blog. Like everything else in Hillary's career, lies and cover ups ensured, and in the end, the FBI, in spite of plenty of evidence, declined to prosecute. Now we know that ex-director James Comey and his cronies had written the exoneration memo months before they even "interviewed:" Clinton. The interview itself was a joke. The fix was in.

It pains me to say this as a former Justice Department agent who served with pride and a conviction that ours was the best system of justice in the world. But when you look at the careers of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder, it is clear that something is amiss in our justice system. These two have gotten away time and time again with crimes that the rest of us would have been dealt with swiftly. They have made a mockery of the notion that that is equal justice for all in this great nation.