I read with great interest how federal judge Emmett Sullivan is requiring Hillary Clinton and two of her assistants to answer questions under "penalty of perjury," which means, simply enough, that if they are caught lying, they can be sent to jail.  However, the questions Judge Sullivan is putting to them, especially Hillary, are not the right ones, and this perjury risk is not as great as it might seem.

First, a little bit about me.  Writing under a pseudonym sometimes requires that I explain my expertise when it is relevant.  It is here.  I attended Harvard Law School at about the same time as Barack Obama.  Obama was so brilliant that he managed to become editor of the Harvard Law Review without writing a single article.  He refuses to release his grades, undoubtedly because he was such a stellar performer that he doesn't want to embarrass us mere mortals who were fortunate enough to be graced by his presence.

But while Obama never had to work at it, I did, and while I was never a civil litigator in private practice (the expertise called on here), I nonetheless picked up a good background, which can help elucidate the situation.  (And no, for those of you who have written me, I am not an alias or a sock puppet for Dr. Lifson – he was at Harvard Business School.  Big difference.)

Anyway, here is the relevant part of Judge Sullivan's order:

... the Government is HEREBY ORDERED to: (1) identify any and all servers, accounts, hard drives, or other devices currently in the possession or control of the State Department or otherwise that may contain responsive information; (2) request that the above named individuals confirm, under penalty of perjury, that they have produced all responsive information that was or is in their possession as a result of their employment at the State Department...  and (3) request that the above named individuals describe, under penalty of perjury, the extent to which Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills used Mrs. Clinton’s email server to conduct official government business.

The first part of the order doesn't even apply to Hillary or her minions; it's directed to the State Department.  The second part does apply to Hillary and requires that she confirm that she has produced all information that "was or is" in her possession as a result of her employment at the State Department.

Well, now that Hillary has erased what she claims are "personal" emails and turned over the rest, it is very easy for her to say that she has produced all the information in her possession.  All she has to do is, in her response, make it clear that the "is" refers to the time after which she wiped her server.  There is no gotcha moment here.

Similarly, I'm not sure what the third part of Judge Sullivan's order will produce.  Hillary has already admitted to conducting government business on her private server; I am not sure what more we are expected to learn in a statement from Abedin or Mills that either of them did the same.

Judge Sullivan could have asked questions that would have gotten Hillary in trouble.  He could have asked her to answer, under oath, whether she received or sent classified material on her server.  She already has said she hadn't, but she has never said it under oath.  She has already been caught using her server to send classified information, so if she repeated the lie again, under oath, she could be guilty of perjury.  But she wasn't asked that.

She also could have been asked if she erased (past tense!) any emails related to her government service, which is a crime.  If the hard drive is recoverable and it can be proved that she lied, the perjury charge arises again.  (That's why I will bet her hard drive has been physically shredded more thoroughly than mozzarella.)

But the fact is that Hillary hasn't been asked either question, and while it appears she has been caught using her server to relay classified information, don't expect her to suffer the same fate as General Petraeus.  She's a Democrat.

This is not the way we are going to defeat Hillary in the election.  If the candidates are relying on her to implode because of this, it simply won't happen.  The only way Hillary will be beaten will be to nominate an articulate conservative who will directly confront her on her race-baiting, sex-baiting, collectivist, oligarchical, anti-constitutional, and anti-freedom agenda.

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.