FBI Head Comey bites the dust in a letter to Congress today … no word from the AG’s office yet!
FBI Reopens Investigation Into Hillary Clinton Emails
The FBI has reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret emails, Director James Comey told Congress in a new letter Friday, heightening the stakes for the Democratic presidential nominee with less than two weeks before Election Day.
NEW: “FBI has learned of the existence of emails
that appear to be pertinent to” Clinton email
investigation http://cbsn.ws/2eZKxMjMr. Comey said his agents learned of new emails “pertinent” to their probe while working on an unrelated case. He said his agents need to review those messages to see whether they contain classified information and whether they affect his previous decision.
11 Days and counting …
What, facing revolt in the ranks from the professionals?
I’ve been chastised for quoting HotAir recently, but fuck it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/10/28/breaking-fbi-reopening-hillary-e-mail-probe/
Possible but a stretch. OTOH, this is unprecedented; so, any guesses will likely be wrong.
Paul Krugman tweet:
That is a sample, a polite I would guess, of what is to be expected from HillFans.
PM Cameron was caught off-guard and left in the cold by the surprise turn of events in the last days in the campaign of the British referendum.
○ Trump: Worst Presidential Candidate Ever
Pim Fortuyn, Geert Wilders, UKIP Farage and Brexit , Donald Trump … a similar pattern on voting day: turnout of Democrats will be decisive. Enthusiasm — GOTV!
But Brexit didn’t have a specific and identifiable face with a hairball on its head. The numbers already reflect those not in the nativist, etc. faction that loathe HRC but have chosen to show and vote for a guy that they find repulsive. All that’s left are the default Republican voters which is why the best guess on states like NC will end up in Trump’s column. But there aren’t enough of those for him to get to 270 EC votes.
October Surprise #3….or #4 or # or #10 or#11 or whatever. I’ve already lost count.
And the hits just keep on comin’.
They wiil continue doing so right on up to Judgement Day, whether that day is the rapidly approaching (
S)Election Day, some day fairly soon thereafter when the rotten vote counts are officiallyignored…errrr, ahhhhh, I mean accepted…or another day further along. Maybe just before the inauguration, maybe a White (Water’s) Gate of the future.Whenever.
The lies can no longer be hidden.
The (
Dis)Information Revolution now cuts both ways.if nothing is true…that is, if nothing can be fully proven to be true (or false, for that matter)…then everything is indeed “permitted.”
This may be the real final result of the digital world.
Nice.
AG
Spooky
Trump tweet – Aug 3, 2015
Trump tweet – Aug 31, 2015
looks like someone tipped him off.
Over a year in advance? I don’t think so. Trump tweeted about Weiner at least as far back as 2013 when he ran for mayor. Not so difficult to connect the dots from HRC’s emails to Weiner if Weiner remained on one’s radar screen and use it to suggest more trouble coming her way. Doesn’t matter if it’s not true or such trouble doesn’t materialize. It falls within that broad class of electioneering crap that supporters eat up.
I didn’t see that it was 15 not 16. nevertheless, could be. And, that said, Tarheeldem has an interesting take, but I think it could be the other way around. Wiener is an accident waiting to happen, to begin with; but possible that Comey is trying to get out in front of a hack.
A hack? The “I was hacked and it’s not true or it’s fake” excuse from Democrats that get caught with their pants down is getting real old. Many are currently running with “lots of the Podesta emails release by Wikileaks are fake,” but not one of the actors can point to a single one that is fake.
We may never know much, if any, of the content from this new batch to emails, but we already know who possessed them and how the FBI discovered them. Comey had to make a call — disclose the existence now to the appropriate members of Congress and incur the wrath of the expected new boss or keep it under wraps for the weeks or months required to evaluate the evidence and hope that it doesn’t change the original conclusion. He chose the conservative option. Possibly because he didn’t believe he could keep it under wraps bc a number of agents were making noise in July and that noise might be louder with the Podesta emails that shed some light on Andrew McCabe (who was promoted by Comey during the email investigation).
From what I understand, it was abnormal for Comey to address Congress in the first place on the matter. Back in July??
DOJ is the normal source for announcing that sort of thing. But we all know how DOJ’s impartiality was compromised, don’t we? Why they sent Comey out instead?
SOP — FBI completes investigations without public comment. This is where Comey deviated:
Technically he kicked it over to DOJ — but practically, the DOJ had to say and do nothing after Comey’s recommendation not to prosecute.
Remember:
A narrow investigation because House and Senate committee members are obsessed with their Benghazi nothingburger and didn’t do their freaking job which would have included a DOJ referral wrt to FOIA violations.
Nothing unusual about heads of any US department appearing at a congressional hearing. This was a high-profile investigation and those two committees had long before initiated demands for HRC’s emails related to Benghazi. By making that public statement, Comey put himself in the House witness seat. Lynch was also called in bc Comey did say:
That’s their story and they’re sticking to it even if nobody other than Hill-guppies believe it.
I read Errol’s comment about a hack as Wiener’s mailbox being hacked and then leaking creating embarrassment for Comey. In effect, similar motive as in your scenario with agents leaking.
Recall that in 2011 Weiner claimed that his phone had been hacked and he hadn’t been involved in sexting. He was lying.
The FBI has had custody of Weiner’s screens for a month. Why would anyone in the agency need to hack his mailbox? And exactly how was that supposed to get leaked and embarrass Comey?
Not at all like my scenario.
I agree with most of what Tarheeldem writes, but I think there’s a both and going on. first of all, there is imo hacking and leaking going on. second, 65,000 emails on the computer? they could have been put there, hence not deleted, but unavailable for examination as it were. anyway, seems to me likely there’s a lot of both and going on.
Why would there even be an issue of fake emails? They were stolen. They also contain nothing that points to wrongdoing.
Folks that ignore that factor are no better than those who revel in celebrity hacks that lead to leaks of pics and video.
The subject of this thread is the FBI investigating emails related to its earlier investigation of HRC’s exclusive use of her private server for her email communications. Doesn’t involve any “stolen emails.”
Folks that can’t keep the stories and facts straight are lame. But folks that then use their confusion to criticize others are assholes.
Don’t be obtuse. You’ve never been one to stick to the subject of a thread, so spare me the sanctimony.
In the specific post you wrote you go on to address Wikileaks which is why I was responded to you bringing up Democrats’ excuse of “i was hacked” or “its fake”.
I responded to Errol’s idle, baseless speculation – but possible that Comey is trying to get out in front of a hack. — using contemporary and widely known information and events. And I as not changing the subject of this thread.
The fact that the Podesta emails were stolen may give you comfort, but it doesn’t change the fact that most of them are now public and doesn’t give you the right to trash anyone that acknowledges their existence or content. That was settled way back in Nixon’s day. Totally creepy that Hill-fans remind me more of Nixon and his gang than any other recent political character.
I’m not a Hill-fan and so will dispute your lie and attempt to discredit by association as such.
I don’t accept your premise that making the point that the emails in question were both stolen and contain nothing incriminating is equivalent to trashing folks as these are facts. My issue is not with their existence or their content.
In any case, it’s a free blog and I’ll continue to exercise the right to respond to any comment. That’s how this works.
Way back in August!!!
As I said in another recent post:
This is all a political version of the great “Spy vs. Spy” Mad Magazine cartoon series.
Only instead of a comedy of errors, it’s a comedy of horrors It features the mistakes of several truly sexually fucked up men, the results of which will have serious repercussions on the lives of millions. Make that billions if we end up in a war w/China and/or Russia.
Sad motherfuckers, all of them.
What goes around, comes around.
On our assses!!!
AG
August 2015
The hairball’s comment is but a side note. Your stock comment isn’t on-target.
Free Beacon – Democratic Congressman Suggests Russia Involved in FBI Reopening Clinton Investigation
One inquiring mind would like to know if Ryan was regurgitating from a hastily written talking points memo from party central or if he’s so thoroughly indoctrinated that the standard response to bad news for a Democrat is blame it on Putin.
More from Dem wankers:
Josh Marshall – May 29, 2013
Donna Brazile – July 7, 2016
Note: Brazile’s tweet was quoting WaPo that was quoting Media Matters (David Brock, HRC’s chief propagandist). There are two sets of response tweets — one from July 7 and the other in the past 24 hours.
Good grief.
Does anyone think Bill’s little airport hijinks with Loretta might have led to this eventuality? Hmmm? Can we follow the breadcrumbs?
My current take is that Bill’s stunt was to protect Lynch and put Comey on the hotseat. If need be, he’s more expendable than Lynch.
If one-quarter of the Dem Party and WJC administration resources/efforts that have gone into protecting/electing HRC had gone into electing Gore in 2000, he would have beat GWB by ten points.
Gore wanted to distance himself from Clinton in 2000, just two years after the impeachment.
Billmon:
In 2000, whenever focus was on WJC, Gore lost ground. Thus, based on solid polling, Gore had no choice but to distance himself from WJC. That, however, didn’t mean no assistance from the Clinton/Gore administration or DNC. And the DNC chair Rendell was hardly helpful to Gore’s campaign.
One of Gore’s most serious handicaps was funding. He was literally competing with Hillary for donations. The RNC convention was held July 31-August 3. The DNC convention chose Aug 14-17. Gore’s campaign was dark for some period of time up until he was formally nominated at the convention. The huge downside of federal matching funds for the primary. Meanwhile the GWB campaign was continuous. Post election day, Gore didn’t have a bank of unspent compliance funds which made it more difficult for him to hire the best talent to fight the FL results.
OTOH, Gore went way too far in his effort to distance himself from WJC by choosing Lieberman. First, because ordinary voters didn’t know that Lieberman had been one of Clinton’s harshest Democratic critics during the impeachment; so, the message Gore tried to send wasn’t heard. Second, because Lieberman sucks.
Clinton partisan Democrats have never acknowledged that WJC handicapped Gore’s campaign. They look at WJC’s approval polling numbers during his last year in office and fail to see that disconnect between those numbers and what occurred on the ground during the campaign when Clinton appeared.
have no clue what Bill’s airport hijinks were intended to accomplish – any thoughts? re: Bill, however, might as well mention some guy on progressive radio was saying Hillary considers herself or wants to be a modern Catherine the Great (didn’t hear his explanation b/c it’s in part II), anyway just sayin’
Whatever the intention, it served to make her impartiality in the case a big ole question mark. Were you reading the press back then?
yes, I read about it. i think I concluded that he ambushed her, but then b/c they spent such a long time talking wasn’t sure I was correct. my info was probably from newspapers and internet, teevee clips on internet – don’t ordinarily have access to teevee, though sometimes do.
I guess that makes sense, he put her impartiality in question. still don’t have an idea whether what he did had consequence to the JD decisions but I’m not conversant with that.
re: Chelsea and the Clinton foundation and the wikileaks, I thought back to that scene of them walking across the lawn hand in hand at the time of the Monica crisis – see how it played out. Catherine the Great had a different path, that’s what came to mind. also, since we’re on the subject, that during this campaign he refers to her as “my wife” – he should call her Hillary, or Secretary Clinton.
Catherine the Great is her role model? A regent or usurper depending upon one’s interpretation. Can we look forward to Potemkin villages and assassination coups? And the lovers — the great Catherine had many lovers and at least one illegitimate child. She was like an 18th century cougar. And the wars.
will try to track down the interview where the guy said that. he was going to explain in Part 2, which i didn’t hear. is this his idea about her or her idea? I don’t know.
Either way it’s an extremely odd choice for a role model. Not that historically there are many women that ruled large and/or powerful countries from which to choose,but why choose one at all?
It’s especially odd given how much she hates Russia. But then, I believe she has said in several interviews that her favorite novel is The Brothers Karamazov. Apparently, she’s fascinated by the Grand Inquisitor, and the idea of people liking him acting on their behalf and taking their moral responsibility from them.
Catherine’s wars were good. I believe it was she who liberated Crimea from the Turks. Hillary’s wars just destroy countries.
Interesting complex figure, counted herself “an Enlightened Ruler” and wrote on Montesquieu; and there are her predecessors Anna, Elizabeth and Peter the Great’s Catherine who was quite someone.
Howard Dean (Did he get a pod-brain transplant?)
Glenn’s response:
Howard Dean has been an ass for years. He’s clueless about anything outside Vermont: Mujahdine Khalq, Iran, Palestine, now even Russia. The stupid has gone berserk about Putin. Even on this site some take if for granted that everything Wikileaks has exposed comes from Russian sources and the Russian government hacked the DNC. No one obsess about the filthy tactics of the DNC against Bernie Sanders. Glenn Greenwald’s statement is lawyerly titillation.
But it’s classic Clinton politics — first shoot, trash, etc. anyone that seems to get the way of their aspirations. That’s what partisan Democrats love about them — they fight — and fail to recognize that it also leaves most people with the impression that team Clinton is hiding that’s relevant. And often enough the impression is confirmed with information that subsequently becomes public.
Since this one was so easy to nip in the bud have to wonder why they’ve chosen the riskier strategy of trashing Comey? The Rush interpretation (that better Weiner on the FP than Podesta emails)? As the latter hasn’t been on the FP, have to disagree with Rush. And if they fear an upcoming Wikileaks bombshell, the FBI email thing will fade in about 60 seconds if such a bombshell hit.
Better Weiner on the front page than the Bundy foul-up. Yes, how do you avoid another Ruby Ridge or Waco, but coddling gun nuts?
Wikileaks depends exclusively on its leakers. And now that they have become politically significant, they can be played by whoever concocts a good story.
Welcome to Karl Rove’s world.
Getting this on the front page has also been helpful to keep the Standing Rock protests and arrests off the front page. Whose interests are severed by that.
Instead of flopping around in search of concocted conspiracies to excuse away any negative press for Clinton, why don’t you look at how team Clinton handles these messes? If everything HRC has said about her emails is true, all she and her team had to do was:
That’s how to be assertive which differs from aggressive. No need to throw anyone under the bus, trash Comey (who HRC will have to work if it all goes her way), or have her legions out there casting all sort so spurious allegations.
So, I ask myself why they haven’t used that option? (FWIW — in her JW deposition, Abedin mostly didn’t know or couldn’t recall. At her age and in such a position, such ignorance and faulty recall doesn’t speak well of her abilities.) Perhaps fear of some parts of the missing link appearing?
WaPo — Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she doesn’t know how her emails wound up on her husband’s computer
Pleading ignorance hardly inspires confidence in Hillary’s right hand. Or confidence in Hillary for choosing such a dumb bunny as her #1 aide. The echoes from a couple of decades ago are difficult not to hear.
What should be easy for the FBI to quickly assess is how those emails got on that computer. Was that computer configured to automatically store emails accessed at Abedin’s address on clinton.mail and/or Yahoo? If so, was the storage facility a standard system package on this computer or was it chosen by the owner(s)? Could she/he access her State.gov email account from any old outside device? My impression is that she/he couldn’t, but she did seem able to forward State.gov emails to her outside email accounts. When those were accessed by a Blackberry or PC, they would also be stored on the access device.
Abedin claims not to have used that computer for work related emails (and rarely used it at all). So, that’s either a lie on her part or Weiner had access to all her email accounts. If the latter, it raises several other questions.
Well, she has to say something about why her purportedly good faith effort to turn over all devices with State Department work on them, an effort that she testified under oath included looking through her apartment, overlooked a laptop with thousands of such emails on them.
There’s always — “I was hacked” or “Putin/Russia did it.” The first one works better because Weiner already has a public reputation of being a sneaky sleazebag.
Still doesn’t get her out of the woods if any of those emails on this laptop aren’t duplicates of what she or HRC have already turned in.
No point in waiting for her inauguration for the scandals to start, I guess.
As I detailed above, Hillary could have put all this aside if she hadn’t gone back to her “fight-fight-fight well.” She’s used it so many times to get out of her sticky messes that that well may now be dry.
There was a reason why a slight majority of Democrats (and a decent majority of the general electorate) preferred no-drama-Obama.
You know, all your unbelievably hostile writing about Clinton and her team on this thread studiously ignores the fact that the FBI has not officially confirmed where they discovered the emails mentioned by Comey in his letter. Hillary’s people are well advised to not respond in specifics because no specifics are clearly known.
If the DOJ officials anonymously speaking to reporters are not correct about who owns the device where the emails Comey mentioned in his letter are stored, any specific factual defense the Clinton campaign offers for Abedin is worthless.
We have had lots of articles about how the deep state can mess with politics as a result of its warrantless wiretapping of everybody. But law enforcement meddling is not unheardof when someone wants to pin a charge on a person.
Do we naively believe that the Clintons are too powerful for the tools of the deep state to be used against them? Do we think they are too loyal to the deep state for this to happen?
It is plausible for FBI investigators unsatisfied with the fact that the email controversy came up flat to plant Abedin files on Weiner’s computer and fabricate a reason to seize that computer once it was clear that Clinton was indeed the Democratic nominee.
The GOP wants to totally bring down the Democratic Party in an existential sense, not just it’s political power to govern but its possibility to ever govern again and undo GOP policy or hold GOP officials accountable. I’ve never seen politics be this existential cultural war and interpret it as a last defense against what is being reported as demographic inevitability.
Our progressive “good government” reflexes might be blinding us to a struggle that is becoming more malevolent.
This is not a topic that I would necessarily snark about.
At a minimum, it is about suppressing the Democratic downticket. At the extreme, it is about gaining total power in the federal government as the GOP has in several states since the Wisconsin Koch Putsch won.
Weiner’s body pics are now the shiny object to wave around to attack Hillary Clinton.
But is Trump who faces a civil suit of raping a 13-year-old in a court action AFTER the election is over.
I think Harry Reid has got the reaction right.
One day last year, my spouse and I sat with a police officer at our dining table giving him a report of identity theft. Someone was using my spouse’s identity and credit card number to order expensive binoculars and other high-end optical goods and having them shipped to another Portland address. But we were ignorant as to how the identity theft had been accomplished, so I guess that makes us dumb bunnies and doesn’t inspire confidence in our general ability to navigate through life. And gosh golly gee, it raises several other questions about our intelligence.
Isikoff FWIW
Exclusive: FBI still does not have warrant to review new Abedin emails linked to Clinton probe
This has my Jim Qwilleran moustache twitching. We have all of this certain knowledge (through the New York Post) of what these emails say, and you have Jim Comey issuing this statement to Congress.
Not had that sort of twitching since the reports of the burglary at the Watergate of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972.
My read of Isikoff: There are three DOJ people (or even FBI people) trying to spin this.
The FBI has been sneak peaking without a warrant files on Weiner’s laptop seized after August 16 for files from Hillary Clinton. That sneak peak is now going to be translated into a warrant which, according to the article has not been approved by DOJ.
Comey and other senior FBI officials are not aware what is in the emails. But some FBI investigators who have just violated the Constitution are.
Comey now wants to make the sneak peek legal through a warrant.
The laptop contains thousands of Abedin emails. This is the point that I would want a review of the custody of that laptop since August 16. This is a fishing expedition, pure and simple.
It now brings into question the authenticity of the allegation against Weiner.
How so much like Donald Trump? Coinkydink?
How easy is it to spoof an SMS message, especially if you are the FBI and want to get a sneak peak at a laptop?
On what authority are is the FBI investigating Weiner? What exactly does the law say about adult men sending texts to 15-year-olds. Rolling Stone has and article:
Can Anthony Weiner Go to Jail for Sexting a 15-Year-Old Girl?
This is from the Daily Mail article:
There are several issues here.
There is something too convenient about when Weiner pops up sexting.
The issues include:
Continual surveillance by NSA/FBI of members of Congress, with political leaks and legal actions for political reasons.
Rogue operations of FBI staff for political reasons.
Preparation of fabricated evidence to leak to the press to provide an excuse for getting a warrant that they could not otherwise get.
Using a legal manuever of getting a warrant to hide illegal search and seizure.
There is something very Roger Stone about the parallelism and timing of this story. Something very “You hit, I hit back harder.”
Not had that sort of twitching since the reports of the burglary at the Watergate of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972.
Weird. I had more than a “twitch” in ’72. From the first reports of the break-in, I could see Nixon’s fingerprints on the caper. Yet, not getting a single twitch with this one.
Suggests that the underage girl was sexting from out of NY state. This latest episode occurred over several months and the photo was from July 2015.
Note: DCS became involved in that one because of the presence of his son in the photo.
Since when is entrapment by media or law enforcement illegal? Although that is only speculation on your part. Maybe Weiner should have gotten some help with his compulsion — it cost him his House seat in 2011 and aborted his mayoral run in 2013, and yet there he was sexting again in 2015-2016. Is sexting the extent of his philandering? Did he take any precautions wrt to the age of those he dallied with? Those are areas for law enforcement to check out when such compulsive behaviors are brought to their attention.
Tarheel-I refer you to my above comments regarding “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”
And my oft-posted Cicero quote, “A liar is not to be believed even when he speaks the truth.”
We are in Lewis Carroll/Alice In Wonderland territory now. Nothing is “as it seems” anymore.
Which brings me right =back to the Suskind/Rove interview in 2002. (Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush-Ron Suskind, Oct. 17, 2004):
Only…there are conflicting “created realities” now at work here.
Believe none of them.
They are all liars. There is no longer any perceptible truth.
When Elon Musk initially publicized the idea that our entire existence is some sort of computer-generated virtual reality” I was…not amused.
Now?
HMMMMMmmmm…!!!
AG
I’m with Vicky on this one.
I see that the metastasizing innuendo and spreading guilt by association is now spreading to the wife of the Deputy Director of the FBI and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe over a political contribution to a lady running for office who was married to a 3rd-in-command FBI administrator.
Are we completely certain the 15-year-old actually exists?
This is a rapidly-moving roto-rooting investigation.
No wonder some very good folks do not want to run for office. The first political move and you totally lose your privacy. Only the crooks can run with the “you know what I am” brush-off; guys like Joe Walsh or Joe Wilson or Mark Sanford.
Neither Abedin nor Weiner are running. A lot of the emails on the private server were indeed private. Abedin is a personal aide to Clinton even if she might have also been a State Department employee. That is common for those who can afford it.
Where my twitching moustache is coming out with further investigation is that sometimes anchoring back to someone who is guilty of something, anything at all, is sufficient. The computer is subpoenaed for child porn although there is a shady difference between child porn that they could convict Weiner of and and what he was invited to do as her “Hannibal Lecter”. But enough to justify nabbing the laptop and sneaking a peak at the metadata on the drive. The metadata then justifies a warrant for thousands of files from the private server to see if they are indeed private, an analytical process that will take beyond the election. It also exposes what is likely a partisan political difference between investigators in the FBI, per the Wall Street Journal.
Wonder if I underrated the prosecutorial talents of Trey Gowdy. He is looking like the kind that enjoys indicting ham sandwiches just for fun.
My intuition remains that our political system is suffering for this sudden infection of political morality when everyone is in a settled cynical norm. This will not restore honest government or ensure that public records get accurately recorded. It will not usher in an age of general accountability.
It likely will not be the moment when the Republican’s most longed-for victory will be achieved: banning the Clintons from politics in disgrace.
My bet is that the private server files are mostly private matters. But that will still allow the FBI to leak them so that the public can pour over them and the usual suspects can spin them to say what they never said.
In this age of surveillance, all of us must pay attention to our most insignificant decisions and minor documents. There are people recording them and willing to use them to twist the narrative to their ends. Not just politicians–anybody.
1984 came just a few decades later than expected.
If she wasn’t Hillary Clinton, the metadata might have been used to justify a lot more than a search warrant.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/death-from-above-nia-csa-skynet-algorithm-drone
s-pakistan
And with her dreaming of Silicon Valley becoming a deputized branch of the NSA…
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/hillary-clinton-wants-manhattan-like-project-to-break-enc
ryption/
… this couldn’t be happening to a nicer hypocrite.
I find it best not to concoct excuses, conspiracies, etc. while the reports of an investigation is developing. Reduces or eliminates what one may have to eat later.
A stretch to postulate that the NYPD and FBI (not love lost between those two operations), as well as a US attorney would collude in creating a non-existent 15 year old. Particularly if an underage girl is what brought the FBI into the investigation.
The relationship between the McCabes (the freaking lead FBI investigator into HRC’s emails) and McAuliffe and Clinton funding Ms. McCabe’s primary campaign was raised two days ago. Seems a totally legit matter to question. Other questions about McAuliffe’s fundraising have also recently surfaced.
Why would you so fully accept HRC’s claim that the destroyed emails on her server were strictly personal? It’s not as if she hasn’t been honest in the past. Several on the email matter alone.
The troops in any institution would be angry if a boss chose to exempt a specific individual from regular rules/laws as Comey’s own words revealed that he did here:
<blockquoteIn looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.<p>
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.</blockquote.
In your suspicions that no 15 year old sexting partner with Weiner exits, did you factor in:
6/12/11 Politico: Weiner admits contact with girl, 17
So, police involvement in this third public report of Weiner sexting doesn’t seem so strange to me.
WSJ (can’t link) FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe
This is a “When did you stop beating your wife?” kind of investigation. It may well be proven in the future that wife-beating…or other deplorable actions…did indeed occur, but meanwhile the subject of the innuendo is trapped. “I did not beat my wife!!!” is not enough. Not if the bait is trolled well it isn’t.
And the beat goes on…
Scylla may have met her Charybdis this time.
We shall see.
In a little more than a week.
At least for the 1st act of the post-electoral brouhaha.
More will follow no matter who “wins,” who “loses” and/or by how much or where.
Watch.
AG
P.S. At least this all slows down the Deep State from functioning as it wants to function. How’re you gonna prosecute a war…against anybody, including your own populace…if there’s no securely seated preznit to blame?
Always remember…crime rates go down when the police are on strike.
How’re you gonna prosecute a war…against anybody, including your own populace…if there’s no securely seated preznit to blame?
Didn’t hamper GWB.
She’ll be fine prosecuting any foreign wars and domestic wars against the left. It’s the rightwing nutjobs that have been empowered by the federal responses in NV and OR that could be very dicey for her.
Especially with that Republican rubber-stamp on war.
It’s exactly parallel to a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife accusation. Thank you, AG.
I am more than even-handed about my disgust with both sides of this latest (
s)election, JDW. It is now simply two gangs fighting for dominance in a neighborhood.The Teflon Don vs. The Insiders.
Both sides reek to high heaven.
AG
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/clinton-team-to-comey-tell-the-country-what-you-know
How I hate hypocrites using religion to hide from personal responsibility. If you’re not fit to lead, get out … resign.
○ ‘Rejoice in our sufferings’: Hillary tells Florida congregation that setbacks deliver character and ‘hope’
Clinton spoke at New Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Photo credit: Daily Mail)
Romans 5
How about a biblical exegesis for those of us whom aren’t Bible readers.
Glad to: it’s in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the one letter he wrote to a congregation where he had never visited, though he was very good friends and co-workers with some of the leaders in that congregation and eventually sent to prison and death in Rome. Briefly said, [today is tough for writing much], he revisits some of his points from previous letters that were [and still are] misunderstood, especially vis a vis the relationship between the new religion which has Gentile converts to it and those who are very, to moderately law observant and consider themselves a [branch of/ part of] Judaism. Paul, having been very observant, though in a Greek context, in a sense throws up his hands at to possibility of mixed or watered-down observance. much much theological discussion in Romans I think you’ll find interesting.
Anyway, in 5 he seems to write in a personal sense about suffering. Have you ever read Victor Frankl btw. If not, I highly recommend.
here’s the NRSV of the Romans
5:1Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Being a Methodist, I don’t expect that Hillary has read Paul very much, given that the Methodist doctrine of sanctification is heretical in that it goes against Paul’s doctrine that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23).
but the methodists are very learned – lots of methodist colleges, etc, so they’re into the scholarship.
sanctification is the third step, “all have sinned” precedes.
at this point I’m much rather try to unravel the mystery of Romans than think about the election
https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Romans-Jewish-Context-Letters/dp/080062937X
LOL Now you’ve got me imagining a guy 2,000 years from now pondering the mystery of the 2016 election. How was it possible in a democracy with 250 million adults that these were the two best candidates they could come up with?
many ppl are asking that very question today!
True. But imagine how much more of a mystery it will be in 2,000 years when nobody can see all of went into the selection of these two.
A linguistic prof looks at the difference between private and public communications.
Deborah Tannen: Why what you say in private looks bad in public, even if it isn’t
“Word choice, tone and the thrill of discovering secrets lend a toxic tone to innocent communications.”
Just like the Trump Billy Bush video agrees with the perception of Trump before the video appeared, so the actual emails agree with the way most analysts understood Hillary Clinton and her staff to operate.
And a point that I have been hammering:
But it is not just Wikileaks. It is the entire warrantless wiretapping apparatus of the Five Eyes countries (US,UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) that use each others’ surveillance to spy on their own citizens. And by the way their own polticians.
Constitutional protections of privacy go down the drain.
And another issue is where exactly does politican privacy begin and the public right-to-know in order to hold accountable end. This is not settled by appeals to Richard Nixon; he willfully recorded everything “at work” but did not record everything said in the Presidential residence.
And given that the same Five Eyes agencies involved in warrantless wiretapping are also engaged in offensive cyberwarfare operations and information warfare, how far can we entrust their restraint when political changes might affect their existence as agencies. This is a hypothetical question now given the candidates’ stated policies, but what if that issue became a real one?
Can Hillary Clinton now be herded into further erosion of the Constitution as Barack Obama seems to have been–just through calumniation and the threat of mutiny?
No. There is no constitutional right to privacy. However, there are restrictions on government invasion of personal privacy. Recently affirmed in Lawrence v. Texas and a few other cases. Thus, the whole NSA dragnet of personal communications is inherently unconstitutional. However, has HRC, Obama, and other Democrats done anything to stop this? iirc Secretary Clinton voted for the Patriot Act and reauthorizations while she was in the Senate. Obama has signed subsequent reauthorizations.
Their rules and too bad if HRC, by her own chosen actions, got trapped in that morass.
Like Nixon, HRC willfully recorded “at work” communications. The erased 18.5 minutes were definitely not viewed as acceptable. Maybe he should have just gone ahead and erased anything that in his mind was “personal” and left it up to Congress to make the case without his communications. Would you have trusted Nixon to erase only those conversations that he deemed personal? I wouldn’t.
Yet, here you are preaching based on your complete faith in Hillary only destroying what she deemed as personal.
Tartheel writes:
This is not a hypothetical question, Tarheel. It is the question of the decade. How far can we trust them? We cannot “trust” them. On the evidence. Those agencies are primarily interested in self-perpetuation, as are all other governmental agencies from dogcatcher level right on up to the current vast bureaucratic spiderweb of the U.S. federal government. This is the core argument of small government types like Ron Paul, and it is a powerful one. It is particularly powerful when applied to agencies that are totally above and beyond all public scrutiny…NSA, CIA, much of the military, the Federal Reserve, etc. Even most of the the (so-called) elected officials have no clue as to what these agencies are doing or…most importantly…how they are funded. The public statements about their funding are laughable. Trillions of dollars simply disappear in the maw of the Deep State. “Oh. We lost it in the Middle East or something” they shrug.
Riiiiiight…
What we really need…and are not likely to get…is a thorough audit to tell us how these entities are funded and how those funds are being used.
Don’t hold your breath, though.
Ain’t gonna happen.
If it was even seriously threatening to happen, there would be a coup of some sort.
Bet on it.
Like dat.
Just look at what has happened to the few effective whistleblowers to see to what lengths the Deep State will go to protect its position.
Only a total blowup of the system would unmask these powers, and that might be worse than letting them continue on their merry way.
So it goes.
AG