Accountability is not punishment, and it is not revenge, but it is the fundamental obligation of anyone who holds or has held power, and it is the measure by which a democracy sustains itself, because every one of us, myself included, must answer for the decisions we make and the consequences of our actions, and there is no principle by which brilliance, influence, or accomplishment can excuse evasion, denial, or the avoidance of responsibility. The Clintons are no different.
I say this with nuance and with personal experience. I have met both former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on multiple occasions, and I have great respect for Bill Clinton’s intellect, his extraordinary capacity to process information, and his mastery as a polymath.
By chance, we once engaged in a conversation on the tarmac at White Plains Airport while waiting for a plane for over an hour (after he had left the White House), and in that brief encounter I witnessed an ability to engage, to maintain eye contact, and to synthesize ideas in real time in a way that I have never experienced in any other human being, and it was, simply put, brilliant.
I met him again two years later and he picked up our conversation as if it happened five minutes prior. But brilliance does not grant immunity, and it does not remove the moral and legal obligations that accompany power and leadership.
The fact that the Clintons have done real and lasting good, through public service, policy, and philanthropy, does not eliminate the requirement to confront mistakes, misjudgments. And worse when they occur, and it does not erase the responsibility to be candid and truthful, even when doing so is inconvenient, difficult, or uncomfortable.
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Leadership requires honesty, and accountability demands acknowledgment, because the currency of credibility is not reputation, it is transparency and we all learn this the hard way.
If serious questions exist about Bill Clinton’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, the only acceptable response is a full and truthful account; if he was involved, he should admit it without equivocation, and if he was not, he should testify under oath before Congress to make that clear, because silence, evasion, or reliance on technicalities only erode trust and leave the public with reason to doubt.
Hillary Clinton’s record likewise demonstrates the need for accountability, in ways that are separate from, but no less important than, the questions surrounding her husband. During the 2016 Democratic primary, the control of DNC finances by her campaign and the effective sidelining of the party’s neutral process, particularly as it affected Senator Bernie Sanders, was never fully acknowledged or owned, and the significance of this failure extends beyond rules or procedures to the core principles of fairness and legitimacy in the democratic process.
Likewise, the response to the WikiLeaks email disclosures, which I personally experienced through Russian hacking of my own emails, illustrates the complexity of accountability, because acknowledging foreign interference does not excuse internal failure, and transparency requires the courage to confront both simultaneously.
That same failure of accountability was evident in the private email server maintained outside government systems and the subsequent destruction of servers and devices after they were known to be subject to congressional inquiry, actions that, at a minimum, demonstrated a disregard for transparency and for the norms that bind public officials entrusted with sensitive information.
The tragedy of Benghazi, which cost the life of a U.S. ambassador and others, further underscores the consequences of avoiding accountability, because lower-level officials faced real criminal consequences for actions tied to the aftermath and the cover-up, yet senior leadership escaped similar consequences, and a system that punishes the expendable while shielding the powerful undermines justice and corrodes confidence in the institutions that are meant to protect us all.
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Perhaps most troubling of all is the repeated resistance to congressional oversight. Subpoenas issued by Congress, particularly bipartisan ones, are not optional; they are legal instruments designed to enforce transparency and to uphold the separation of powers, and when public figures with vast resources use delay, legal maneuvering, or silence to outlast scrutiny, they signal that accountability is a privilege reserved for others, and in doing so they erode not only the integrity of the office they once held, but the public trust in the democratic institutions they were sworn to serve.
This is not about erasing accomplishments, nor is it about demonizing anyone, but it is about moral and civic responsibility, because if ordinary citizens are required to answer questions, to comply with lawful process, and to accept consequences, then so too must those who have occupied the highest offices, wielded the greatest influence, and amassed the most power.
The Clintons, like all of us, deserve due process, fairness, and the presumption of innocence, but they do not deserve exemption from scrutiny, and they cannot escape the reality that honesty, transparency, and accountability are not optional, they are the defining obligations of anyone who has held or who continues to hold influence over the lives and trust of others, and the time for deflection, delay, and buying time has run out.