A top Republican Senate hopeful used FBI Director James Comey’s remarks on Hillary Clinton’s private email to attack the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee as well as his own Senate rival, a sign that the email scandal will haunt the campaign trail despite the lack of a formal indictment.
“The message here — as it has been throughout her career — is that Hillary Clinton is too big fail,” Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., said Tuesday afternoon. “People in lesser positions would have been punished, but she gets to run for president of the United States.”
Heck, a brigadier general in the Army Reserve and candidate for Senate in Nevada, cited Comey’s frank criticism of Clinton’s behavior — “they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said — to argue that she meets the standard for prosecution under the law against “gross negligence” in the handling of classified information. Heck faulted his Democratic Senate rival for backing Clinton and suggested both candidates are corrupt.
“This is entirely consistent with the career of my opponent, Catherine Cortez Masto, who has supported Clinton throughout this criminal investigation,” Heck said of the “double-standard” applied to Clinton. “As Nevada’s Attorney General, Ms. Cortez Masto abused her power by prosecuting a political opponent for far less, while letting multiple fellow Democrats off with slaps on their wrists.”
That accusation dates back to 2010, when Cortez Masto accused then-Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki for allegedly mishandling funds as state treasurer. Krolicki countered that she was trying to damage him in the run-up to a potential campaign against Sen. Harry Reid. “This is a complete partisan enterprise,” Krolicki said at the time. A federal judge ultimately rejected her arguments, saying the case was “not sufficient and does not satisfy due process.”
