Twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could be in jeopardy of losing her license to practice law after an ethics complaint was filed against her in Arkansas, Fox News reported. The organization Democracy Restored is going after the former Secretary of State because of her role in perpetuating the Russiagate scandal against President Donald Trump.
The complaint published on Wednesday asks the Arkansas Bar Association to make a "formal review of the conduct of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Esq., a licensed attorney in the State of Arkansas, in connection with her actions during the 2016 presidential campaign." The filing cites the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct and asserts she violated the rules against "Dishonesty" and "Prejudice to the Administration of Justice."
This comes after the Senate Judiciary Committee released recently declassified documents from the Durham report outlining her role in the fake scandal cooked up against Trump during his first run for president. A since-debunked dossier that turned out to be linked to the Clinton campaign suggested that Trump was colluding with the Kremlin to win the 2016 presidential election.
The Trump administration continues to dig into the origins of this scheme that seems to have Clinton's fingerprints all over it. On Tuesday, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard removed security clearances from 37 intelligence officials involved in the scheme against Trump, including former and current intelligence agents.
The government watchdog group is seeking to revoke Clinton's law license following what it believes to be blatant misconduct on her part. "Within this release, there is an annex, which suggests that Clinton approved a plan created by one of her advisors to release false information with the purpose ‘to smear’ her political opponent during a presidential campaign and distract from the news surrounding her own legal accusations," the filing said.
"This revelation demands an already overdue inquiry into Clinton’s fitness as a member of the Arkansas Bar," the complaint added. What began as Clinton's "opposition research" from April 2016 was "unverified" and "unvetted" but still treated as serious allegations by the intelligence community.
The complaint maintains that the purpose of this false information was "to injure her political opponent" and that Clinton "personally signed off on an effort to amplify this bad intelligence to the media and federal law enforcement." Democracy Restored believes that this is reason enough to initiate action against Clinton.
"If there is one political scandal synonymous with the 2016 election, it is Operation Crossfire Hurricane," one of the organization's directors told Fox News in a statement. "Former Secretary Clinton's utilization of a bunk dossier by a foreign ex-spy to harm a political opponent violates basic ethical norms as well as the Arkansas bar's own rules of conduct for attorneys," the representative added.
"The Arkansas bar needs to take a serious look at former Secretary Clinton's involvement in this scandal and take appropriate action." Though no criminal complaint has been filed against Clinton, Democracy Restored asserts that there is evidence she was involved in "a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects."
Even if Clinton was responsible for the investigation, as the organization is charging, it's clear that she would not have been able to do anything about it without the involvement of the intelligence community. Last month, Gabbard found that outgoing President Barack Obama and his intelligence officials created the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment "that they knew was false, promoting the contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, as though it were true," Gabbard said.
"The documents we released shows how they did it: manufacturing findings from shoddy sources, suppressing evidence that disproved their false claims, disobeying IC tradecraft standards, and withholding the truth from the American people. In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people and worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump," Gabbard charged.
"This kicked off what would essentially be a years-long coup against President Trump, which included federal investigations, two impeachments, FBI raids on his home, arrests of senior officials, smears and harassment of President Trump and his family, and more. The American people deserve the truth, accountability, and justice," the DNI chief charged.
"The integrity, and therefore the future of our democratic republic demands it," Gabbard added. She would later strip the involved intelligence officials of their clearances, but it's difficult to imagine that such an egregious abuse of power was contained to just a few dozen people.
If Clinton was behind the Russia collusion hoax that nearly derailed Trump's first presidential term, she should be worried about losing more than just her license to practice law. Nevertheless, it is a good place to start as the dominoes fall in this outrageous scandal.
