Clinton and de Blasio: Good intentions don’t make you above the law

Both Bill de Blasio and Hillary Clinton learned a hard lesson this week: no amount of goodwill is an excuse for playing fast and loose with the law.

Days after FBI Director James Comey issued a strongly worded statement rebuking Clinton for her “extremely careless” behavior of using personal email servers to communicate classified State Department information, the New York City Campaign Finance Board did the same to de Blasio on Wednesday for raising unlimited funds through a political nonprofit from donors with business before the city.

While both Clinton and de Blasio dodged a more severe slap on the wrist – Comey did not recommend an indictment for Clinton, while the Campaign Finance Board ultimately ruled that none of the 2014 spending from the nonprofit would count against spending limits for de Blasio’s 2017 re-election – the rulings effectively take them to task for their political sleights of hand.

For months, de Blasio and his aides have insisted that every dollar raised through the Campaign for One New York nonprofit was within the legal regulations and wholly necessary in order to combat the vaguely specious “monied interests” – unnamed Daddy Warbucks lurking in the shadows apparently obstructing the mayor’s agenda.  While the CFB’s official ruling more or less affirmed de Blasio’s position, they (and Common Cause NY’s Susan Lerner) also noted the irony of a mayor who claims to be a lifelong campaign finance reform advocate deciding to actively work around contribution limits by forming a nonprofit.

Clinton’s email charade is even more perplexing. Her steadfast refusal to acknowledge how the laws governing email use by federal officials have changed since her tenure at the State Department has undoubtedly contributed to the prevailing notion that she can’t be trusted. Even more damaging is Clinton’s two-step around whether she was communicating sensitive information through that server – “no classified material” became “not classified at the time” and most recently no information “marked classified” – claims that Comey found to be completely untrue, as 110 of her emails in 52 email chains contained classified information.

What de Blasio and his former boss have in common is the irritating liberal conceit that because their intentions were pure, the laws of the land somehow don’t apply to them. De Blasio supporters point to the Campaign for One New York as integral to the establishment of the city’s universal pre-K program, while Clintonites note that the server was simply a mechanism to maintain control over her communications and insulate herself from political opponents – and oh, Colin Powell did the same thing.

Surely Dean Skelos could argue that his corruption conviction was a result of pure intentions, as he used his position of influence in the state Senate to aid corporations that employed his troubled son, but that’s not a legal argument.

Pureness of heart does not afford the opportunity to pick and choose which laws to follow.