The Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton plan to undermine an election is unraveling. Evidence is being revealed. Whistleblowers are coming forward. Bureaucrats are being fired. Criminal referrals are being made. Grand juries are being empaneled. Conspirators are “lawyering up.” The truth is coming out.
Traitorous actors within our own government tried to overthrow a duly elected president, and now the public is learning the details. To call what was done “treasonous” is not hyperbole, but how consequences will be delivered is yet to be determined. I optimistically hope for justice, but I realistically expect something less.
Nobody wants to see the three stooges of Obama’s intelligence community (Jimmy, Jimmy, and Johnny) fitted for orange jumpsuits more than I do. But I no longer have enough faith in our institutions to expect a TDS-afflicted jury of Washington swamp-dwellers, in a trial presided over by an Obama judge, to convict one of their own. But though justice may be elusive, President Trump’s staff is providing something equally important: deterrence.
Either consciously or subconsciously, all criminals are in the risk-reward analysis business. It doesn’t matter if they’re engaged in strong-arm robberies of New York bodegas or violating the civil rights of Americans using the power of the FBI. Criminals all consider whether the rewards of their misbehavior offset the risk of significant punishment.
The craftiest commit crimes with reasonable rewards and minimal risk of punishment, such as shoplifting less than $950 of merchandise from San Francisco retailers. The less astute criminals commit capital crimes, while leaving thousands of pages of evidence in a room at FBI headquarters. That brings me back to our three stooges: former FBI director James Comey, former ODNI director James Clapper, and former CIA director John Brennan — the men who weaponized their departments to defy the will of the people.
Comey, Clapper, and Brennan were not particularly proficient criminals, because they fell victim to complacency in their consideration of probabilistic consequences. They assumed that since a long list of government miscreants (Lois Lerner, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Kevin Clinesmith, Andrew McCabe...) had suffered no significant consequences, the risks for violating their oaths of office were minimal. But that assumption was based on their belief that any future attorney general would operate just as the appointees of Barack Obama and Joe Biden had. They didn’t factor into their analysis that the future is unknowable.
The most difficult part of criminal risk-reward assessment is understanding that there are unknowable unknowns — risks not understood, because nobody knows they exist. A future construction project uncovers a body, revealing a past murder. A new forensic tool provides a type of evidence never used before. Because the future is unknowable, the risk of being caught breaking the law is never zero.
The unknowable future has arrived for our stooges, and the gang that tried to help Hillary Clinton tar Donald Trump as a Russian asset are realizing that there were risks that they hadn’t considered. Election tampering does not guarantee election victory, and the political environment was dynamic rather than static.
Honest Abe Lincoln was correct: “You cannot fool all the people all the time.” Only 50 percent of the voters, plus 1, are needed to change the country’s political direction. In 2024, 50 percent of the voters, plus 1.1 million, realized that they had been “fooled” by their “public servants” and chose a president with a different agenda from Barack Obama’s and an attorney general with a different moral foundation from Eric Holder’s, Loretta Lynch’s, and Merrick Garland’s. With one night of election surprises, the conspirators went from predator to prey, and criminal defense attorneys have started planning lifestyle upgrades with their retainer windfalls.
I continue to hope for actual justice, but even without convictions, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, and Pam Bondi have changed the risk/reward calculus — and hopefully the behavior — of government miscreants for years to come.
Imagine a career criminal watching an episode of Forensic Files and learning that a new scientific test can link him to past crimes with evidence undetectable to the human eye. He now goes to bed every night wondering if it will be the night his door is shattered by a law enforcement battering ram, and he awakens every morning wondering if the crime for that day is worth the unknowable risks. Even without embracing a new morality, recognition that the future is unknowable causes a bias toward less crime.
Similarly, our taxpayer-funded criminals have learned that changing voter sentiment can install a “new sheriff” at any time, and the risks of undermining our republic are far greater than they had judged just six months ago. Deterrence isn’t as emotionally satisfying as retribution, but it isn’t nothing, either.
John Green is a staff writer for The American Free News Network and a state content writer for Convention of States Action. He is a graduate of Purdue University with 40+ years of experience in systems and organizational development. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
Image via Pxfuel.