Emails and their election impact

There’s more than enough chatter going on in the country about Hillary Clinton’s emails. Like Bernie Sanders said months ago, nobody wants to hear about these damn emails anymore. Even with the FBI re-opening the case in the wake of ex-congressman Anthony Weiner’s premature evacuation, voters seem to be over Clinton’s email fiasco. As FBI Director James B. Comey said, we agree that Clinton’s handling of the emails was irresponsible, but it was by no means illegal. Like Clinton, we’re confident her political enemies will, once again, be disappointed when the newest batch of emails really contains nothing controversial.

On the other side of the aisle, the Republican candidate seems to be dealing with his own set of lawsuits. While Clinton’s never seemed to make any ground (“No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey said), Donald Trump seems to have no problems finding reasonable people who will attempt to prosecute him for a slew of crimes.

While Trump insists the women who are accusing him of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault are simply doing it for recognition, he has yet to give an answer on whether he’ll prosecute them for slander or libel after the election. Perhaps this is because not only is he going to lose such a case, but he will lose so badly that the world might learn these women are being honest. But Trump can’t necessarily run from or avoid all of these cases, because on Dec. 16, Donald Trump will be standing trial against an anonymous “Jane Doe” who claims that the businessman assaulted her when she was 13.

To make matters worse, Sunday night, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid claimed the FBI had “explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government.” While we all know Sen. Reid is notorious for his daring anti-GOP claims in election years, this one actually found some ground. Naturally, the FBI did some research. What they find will shock some of you, disappoint a lot of you and persuade absolutely none of you to change your minds.

The FBI found several ties between many of Trump’s businesses and one of Russia’s largest banks. While details are still being worked out, Slate reported there has been a “sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.” While we can’t quite yet say what that relationship is, some communication has been going on. Alfa Bank, mind you, is a bank reserved for Russia’s political and business elite.

Moreover, an overwhelming amount of evidence has surfaced this week claiming Trump’s companies have, according to Newsweek, “systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders.” Now, of course, this isn’t the first incidence of Trump hypocrisy, but with the way Trump demands his supporters to repeat “emails, emails, emails,” hopefully they’ll wake up and smell the irony.

Seriously, the fact that it’s gone on this long is absurd. Trump supporters are not wrong to criticize Clinton for her mishandling of emails. That’s fair. But Trump is guilty of far worse crimes, and finally they’re catching up to him. It’s amazing that those who support him are able to justify child-rape allegations, sexual assault claims, the falsity of Trump University, overt racism, bigotry, sexism, the total inability to formulate actual domestic or international policies and possible ties with Russia’s elite. But now that he’s got some highly questionable and, honestly, incriminating emails in his past, it’ll be cute to watch them wiggle their way out of this one without stepping on their “Hillary’s e-mails” toes.