Exclusive–FreedomWorks’ Brandon: Dems Only Care About ‘Criminal Intent’ When Springing a Clinton

The leader of FreedomWorks, the Washington-based network and support hub for Tea Party and other conservative activists, told Breitbart News Wednesday that the FBI’s recommendation that the Department of Justice should not prosecute Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified electronic correspondence betrays the phony criminal reform Democrats are pushing through Congress.

“I was not surprised by the outcome, but I was surprised by the reasoning,” said Adam Brandon, the CEO of FreedomWorks, about the announcement Tuesday by FBI Director James Comey that the FBI had concluded its investigation and he would be telling the DOJ it would be inappropriate to pursue criminal charges against the former first lady during her four-year tenure leading the State Department.

“It truly is baffling how Comey can describe Clinton’s handling of classified documents and correspondence as “extremely careless,” but not “grossly negligent,” which is the standard in federal law,” he said. Clinton is expected to be the Democratic nominee for president.

FreedomWorks activists from across the country have been calling and emailing him and members of the staff to express their disgust with the FBI’s decision, he said. “They see this as an example of two sets of rules. They are saying that they know that if they did anything close to what Hillary did, they would be charged, indicted and they would be taken off to jail.”

Brandon said the FBI’s decision was based on Comey’s determination that Clinton did not have criminal intent–which is in direct contradiction to what Democrats are pushing through Congress.

“However rigged the system may be for the politically connected, Clinton’s brush with criminal prosecution is an opening for Democrats who’ve so unwisely smeared criminal intent reform to revisit the issue, this time without disingenuous populist grandstanding,” he said.

“For more than a year, many Democrats have been hypocritical on criminal intent reform in Congress, working to create misleading narratives and unnecessarily politicizing the issue. Apparently, intent matters to Democrats only when it comes to Hillary Clinton and classified information stored on her private servers,” he said. “There are two criminal justice systems in the United States, one for Hillary Clinton and another for everyone else.”

Legislation proposed in the House and Senate would assign a default level of criminal intent when a federal criminal law does not require it. Without intent requirements, American citizens can be convicted of crimes they never intended to commit.

Brandon said many Democrats have suggested that this is an unnecessary reform and have refused to move forward with wider criminal justice legislation because they believe that this protection of rights would make it more difficult for federal prosecutors to convict Americans of regulatory crimes.

“The wide latitude granted to Clinton by prosecutors for her supposed lack of intent pales in comparison to how most Americans faced with federal prosecution have fared,” he said. “The charging power of prosecutors has proved too difficult for the average American, who may not have the financial means or political clout of the Clinton machine, to overcome.”