Josh Earnest came close to a tacit confession that the FIX is in.

On the afternoon of June 9, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with President Obama in the White House.  We are unlikely to ever know with certainty the substance of the meeting.  But White House press secretary Josh Earnest gave us some hints. 

When asked earlier that day whether persons investigating the former secretary of state’s use of an unsecured, private server to send classified government information – henceforth Hillmailgate – might be influenced by President Obama’s endorsement of Secretary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, Earnest said this:

Earnest’s statement that the president is confident in endorsing Clinton because he knows the investigators have a job to do “independent of any political interference” implies that Obama already knows that the investigation has cleared Clinton of any wrongdoing.  Hence, his “confidence” is substantive. 

Earnest also claimed there is no effort to interfere with the professional investigators and prosecutors because the president knows they cannot be “swayed.”  So how does the president trusting the independence of the investigators indicate the conclusions of their investigation?  Earnest is using timeline-muddled language.

Reading in between Earnest’s lines, it sounds as though the president knows that no guilt will be attached to his party’s nominee.  In other words, it’s a done deal.  

Despite Earnest’s earnest disclaimer, some people, in advance of the big announcement, are skeptical concerning the ultimate veracity of the investigation’s findings.

We skeptics ponder, at least, three possible outcomes:

1. The investigation will conclude that Secretary Clinton committed serious illegalities, which may/will trigger appropriate legal proceedings against her. (move for indictment with potential prosecution)
2. The investigation will come to the #1 conclusion but will not recommend indictment. (probable guilt, but the move for an indictment would harm the nation at this time)
3. The investigation will conclude that Mrs. Clinton is, at most, guilty of several previously admitted misjudgments – both by her and by one or more of her staff – but no actions justify further adjudication. (nothing to see here, folks; move along)

Of course, (1) and (3) could merge into a two-faced end-game with a private guilty face and a public innocent face.  This would be the Hillmailgate FIX.

As the public speculates on the coming dénouement of the drama, the speculated consequences of the FIX are in the air:

(A) If the investigators find sufficient cause to recommend an indictment, but the political officials (publicly Lynch, privately Obama) nix that recommendation, there will be mass DoJ/FBI resignations; this would be the honor-bound response from the ranks of the professionals.

(B) If the most senior political officials privately squash the FBI’s findings that are harmful to Mrs. Clinton, James B. Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will go public with his disagreement and resign.  This would be the heroic fall-on-his-sword move for the good of the bureau.

As a precedent for resignations, we recall the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate saga, when President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.  Richardson refused and resigned in protest.   Nixon then directed Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox.  He refused and resigned, too.  Solicitor General Robert Bork inherited the authority and fired Cox.  Revenge on Bork came when President Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1987 and the U.S. Senate refused to confirm him.

This survey of several options brings us to a blunt question: do we believe the Earnest statement?

Before answering that, here are several preparatory queries:

1. Does the Obama regime have a definitive history of telling the truth?
2. Are career civil service employees generally inclined to sacrifice careers on principle?  (A few have with regard to the Veterans Administration and have suffered consequences.)
3. Has this administration encouraged and embraced a culture of whistle-blowing?
4. What’s the likelihood that A.G. Lynch and President Obama are not completely up to date on the DoJ/FBI investigation into Hillmailgate?  In other words, does anyone believe that, after all this time, no decision has yet been made?
5. If you were an investigator or prosecutor working the case, what impact would you expect on your government and post-government careers if you testified that the Hillmailgate outcome was a FIX?
6. And finally, in your life experiences, lived and observed, how often do persons act out of self-interest (as in existential) compared to acting on principle?

However it ends, this “investigation” will end before the Democrat convention.  It won’t hang fire for much longer.