Ben Sasse: “yesterday, James Comey, the FBI Director, announced that his agency will not recommend that the Department of Justice…”

“yesterday, James Comey, the FBI Director, announced that his agency will not recommend that the Department of Justice bring Federal criminal charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding her use of a set of off-the-books, undisclosed, unsecured email servers, not only for her own personal correspondence but also for her official duties, including highly sensitive material related to foreign intelligence and related to terrorist targeting. Director Comey's rationale for systematically and devastatingly recounting Secretary Clinton's many violations of the law and yet recommending against a prosecution is being hotly debated both outside and inside the FBI, as it should be. I rise in this body today, as a matter of oversight, to speak to a slightly different matter than the prosecutorial discretion and decision. The debate about why the crimes are not being prosecuted in this case should not blind us to a broader, debasing problem in our civic life today. Simply put, lying matters. Public trust matters. Integrity matters. And woe to us as a nation if we decide to pretend this isn't so. This issue is not about political points or about Presidential politics. It is about whether the people can trust their representatives, those of us who are supposed to be serving them in government for a limited time.…”