In April, at the Front Page Magazine website, Carolina Journal contributor Lloyd Billingsley foreshadowed yesterday’s move by FBI Director James Comey to look the other way when confronted with the “careless” handling of classified emails by likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

american-evitaIt turns out Comey and the Clintons have a history. Drawing from American Evita, a 2004 political biography of Hillary Clinton by bestselling author Christopher Andersen, Billingsley notes that Mrs. Clinton needed connections in New York to win the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and she found some in New Square.

New Square, a Hasidic enclave 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, had voted as a bloc in previous elections and campaign workers urged Hillary urged to stop there. In New Square, four members of the Skver sect had been convicted in 1999 of bilking government aid programs for some $30 million. During her visit, Hillary denied that any pardon was discussed.

The day before the election, in a letter to New Square’s main synagogue, President Bill Clinton said he looked forward to visiting the village. As Andersen noted, New Square delivered Hillary’s biggest victory margin of any community in New York state, 1,359 votes to only 10 for her opponent Rick Lazio.

[snip]

During the final days of his presidency, Bill Clinton opted to reduce the prison terms of the New Square offenders, and after 9/11 that sparked an investigation. As Anderson notes, “Hillary received an unexpected gift in late June when, without explanation, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey closed the New Square clemency case.

Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich also drew an investigation and Andersen finds it odd that the Bush administration would “help the Clintons out” by refusing to release documents related to the pardons. And “in accordance with his boss’s wishes, U.S. Attorney James Comey gave Bill and Hillary a pass.”

We all know what happened yesterday involving Clinton and Comey.