National Journal columnist Ron Fournier says “there is a higher bar you have to get over before you prosecute” Hillary Clinton because she is “running for president.”
As a panelist on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday, Fournier said that Clinton’s email scandal “plays into the this whole question that we really can’t trust her. That she’s been saying things like well, ‘They weren’t marked classified,’ when we all know, and voters understand, that really doesn’t matter.”
“Legally, though, there’s a big bar that you have to get over to prosecute anybody for these crimes, much less somebody who’s running for president, and as critical as I’ve been of Hillary Clinton, and I am very critical of Hillary Clinton, I do understand that when somebody is running for president, there is a higher bar you have to get over, because we can’t have a system in which we’re constantly charging people who are running for president with a crime.”
Later, Fournier suggested that “politically, there’s severe questions about her judgment that voters really have to look into it. Legally, I can’t sit here on the set and say that she has definitely violated the law, and I do know that there is a harder — there is a higher bar you have to get over before you prosecute somebody who’s running for president. That’s just a fact.”
Host Joe Scarborough asked Fournier, “In what section is that?”
Fellow panelist Sam Stein, of the Huffington Post, sarcastically added, “Section B.”
After a chorus of laughter, Scarborough argued that “There are a lot of people that would say that we are all equal under the law… if [Clinton] were an underling [at the State Department] she would already have charges against her. I have no doubt in my mind.”
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