Washington's smoking gun tyranny: Jonah Goldberg

Someone named Jonah should probably avoid talk of white whales (I’ve heard all the whale jokes btw). But if I had one Ahab-like obsession I can’t let go of this election season, it may be idiotic tyranny of the “smoking gun.”

The phrase comes from an 1894 Sherlock Holmes story The Gloria Scott (“The chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand."), but it has come to mean conclusive proof of wrongdoing. You know so-and-so is the murderer if he’s standing over the corpse, the gun still smoking in his hand.

My objection to the phrase stems from the fact that the smoking gun standard is ridiculous. Very, very, few criminals are convicted with the equivalent of smoking gun evidence (indeed, by definition a time-consuming investigation can’t find a smoking gun). And very, very, few reporters decline to publish damning pieces about politicians if they come up just shy of finding a smoking gun.

In politics, the phrase secured its place in the American political lexicon in 1974, when the White House released a tape recording revealing that President Nixon had been involved in plans to cover up the Watergate break-in from the beginning. Conservative Rep. Barber Conable, R-N.Y., long an ally of the president, famously called the recordings a “smoking gun.” Conable’s verdict signaled cratering support from Republicans. A few days later, Nixon resigned. The smoking gun was the straw that broke the camel's back because it forced Nixon to see the writing on the wall.

So it’s interesting to hear the Clinton campaign respond to every single new email-related revelation: “There is no smoking gun here.”

Now, I’ve been banging my spoon on my highchair for over a year that Clinton’s stealth serveris the smoking gun. It’s just sitting out in the open smoldering like an abandoned-tire fire. The server’s mere existence proves she did something wrong, which even she has admitted albeit in a Nixonian way. Mistakes were made, as Tricky Dick used to say.

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It’s worth revisiting the smoking gun of the Nixon White House. What did the tape prove? It didn’t prove that Nixon ordered the break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. It proved that he had been in on the coverup far longer than he had claimed, and that he wanted aides to monkey-wrench the FBI’s investigation.

Well.

On Aug. 8, 2015, Clinton submitted to a federal judge a signed declaration in which she swore "under penalty of perjury" that she had directed all emails that "were or potentially were federal records" to be handed over to the State Department. In October, she swore to Congress that “I provided the department, which has been providing you, with all of my work-related emails — all that I had.”

These were lies. In May, the State Department inspector general confirmed that numerous relevant emails weren’t handed over. Then in July, FBI Director James Comey told Congress that the FBI found thousands of emails Clinton had never turned over. Also, a new report from the FBI confirms that the Clinton organization started deleting emails after it was ordered not to by Congress.

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This barely scratches the surface of the falsehoods and coverups Clinton is guilty of. Nearly every single factual assertion she made to the public in her initial news conference has proved to be a lie. When The New York Times reported on the existence of her server, Clinton campaign officials screamed bloody murder about how inaccurate and unfair it was. They also started deleting emails and smashing BlackBerrys in a hurry, even as Clinton was publicly bragging about her dedication to transparency.

The Clinton spin team wants to say there’s no smoking gun in the emails proving she was bribed in a pay-for-play scheme with her family foundation. That remains to be seen. But why do the news media buy this standard? If a murder suspect is found with an illegal non-smoking gun, it might not prove murder, but it is “smoking gun” evidence of possessing an illegal firearm.

It seems to me that the question all of the would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins should be asking is, “Was she in on the coverup?” Proving that should be their white whale.

Jonah Goldberg, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and National Review contributing editor, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him@JonahNRO.

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