Hours after The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton might have violated federal records requirements by using her private server…
… John Podesta sent an email to her former chief of staff Cheryl Mills.
On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 10:57 PM, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com> wrote:
On another matter….and not to sound like Lanny, but we are going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later
http://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/41841
Well, it’s all probably quite innocent.
EDIT 1:
It has been pointed out to me elsewhere that, in this context, “dump” usually means “hand over en masse” rather than “destroy”.
However, in this case, when the time came, far from handing over “all” the emails, Clinton took considerable pains to permanently destroy tens of thousands of them.
EDIT 2:
Six days later, Podesta wanted to “zap Lanny [Davis] out of our universe” for suggesting that Hillary commit to an independent review of the whole email database. Podesta told Mook that he “can’t believe [Davis] committed her to a private review of her hard drive on TV.”* That sounds more like bury it until it stops moving, perhaps necessitated after getting more of the actual facts on the e-mail server in between the 2nd and the 8th. …
If Podesta intended on using full disclosure for scandal triage, the problem was that Hillary didn’t actually follow through. Part of the reason for this is that she had already short-sheeted State in December, a fact that Podesta may not have known on the evening of March 2nd. She had only turned over half of the e-mails, and only on 55,000 pieces of paper, keeping the rest as “private” and deleting them later in the month — in defiance of a Congressional order to preserve all records. (Learning about that might have changed Podesta’s mind on full disclosure between March 2nd and 8th, too.) Hillary and her legal team then refused to turn over the electronic files or hardware over to State or Congress for months, only finally acquiescing to the FBI when it became clear that they might come with a warrant.
Thanks to these moves, the story kept moving forward drip by drip over the following year as the FBI and State pored over the e-mails. Hampered by Hillary’s actions, State couldn’t clear up the few dozen outstanding FOIA demands in court proceedings, the latest of which came out late yesterday. And thanks to the Clintonian impulse to stonewall first, last, and always, the investigation has come back to life thanks to the discovery of a device not disclosed by Huma Abedin and Team Hillary to the FBI. This is precisely the outcome that Podesta’s suggestion was designed to avoid.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/11/01/podesta-mills-going-dump-e-mails/
From my sampling (admittedly a very small sample) of the Podesta-files, I’ve gained some respect for Podesta. His comments appear adult, non-emotional, and display good political instincts/impulses. (With the exception of accepting CT wrt Russia as factual.) Perhaps a stretch, but I’d liken him to having been the babysitter of a bunch of kindergarteners.
At that time, he had to have known that HRC hadn’t turned over all her emails. OTOH, would he have had any reason to suspect that hers would be as harmless to her as his emails were to him? Also worth noting:
Podesta appears to have run with a rumor that Eric Braverman was a Kremlin mole. Looks like he left the CF in a garden variety power struggle to me. The paranoia about Russia seems to be widespread among team Clinton members. Have to wonder about the roots of this paranoia which seems to go back many years.
Thomas Frank: Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run
I thought this one was pretty choice. Common Core just doing its intended job…
Clinton Campaign Email Discusses Effort “To Produce an Unaware and Compliant Citizenry
The next phrase is the truly chilling one.
“The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly.”
But they’re prepared.
I had heard that remark, but hadn’t seen the larger quote it comes from. Thanks for that. This Ivy guy seems to be one of the few members of the Democratic elite who has a grasp of what is happening.
But there’s a couple of problems with what Infowars (which I never look at) says there:
Common COre was very bi-partisan-y profiteering. Even Ted Kennedy, who should have known better, worked on it. He did seem to wise up to it later, however.
I think Ivy was being snarky.
Don’t believe you are reading this carefully; this email is pitching an Idiocracy outcome as a consequence of reality TV incentives. There’s no left or right in it; it suits the Russians too, come to think of it, with their ‘post-truth’ smokescreens and constant electoral confusion while smiling thugs terrify the deep state. You know, like Vladimir Surkov openly discusses with his concept of “managed democracy”.
This is an area where the US is now moving closer to Russia, which creates opportunities for square-assed little meddlers like Putin to get in his licks.
One of my takes on this is that the elite colleges/universities are producing more graduates with generic education skill sets, public policy, and law degrees than the market (including a functioning public sector) needs or can absorb. (This goes back several decades.) It would never do for the graduates of these institutions to be unemployable or employed at a low salary level. So, create well paying public jobs (what would someone like Angleton have done if the CIA hadn’t been created?). Too many still and/or too many not well paid enough, add layers of foundations, corporate lobbying, etc. — all the revolving door positions. They produce nothing. (A corporate lobbyist may facilitate legislation the benefits his/her employer but in the aggregate it’s merely moving the money around into different wealthy pockets and almost always at the expense of the many.)
I observed this in one specific industry, and it had to do with college and not elite colleges. In the late seventies, few of the senior and long-term professional staff had undergrad degrees. Most had some college education and one (who was sharp as a tack) had no college. Within a couple of decades very few didn’t have an undergrad degree. And the number of MBAs was increasing. The job did require a certain level of cognitive ability, communication skills (written and oral), and mathematical or analytical skills. Accounting skills were helpful, but few had mastered much in that area and some that had were weak in the other areas.
All those degrees didn’t produce better performance — and in the aggregate weren’t as smart as those in the industry in the late seventies. Although that could have been an artifact of reduced corporate investment in OJT and *.
The biggest difference is that they commanded much higher salaries. Companies covered that by rejecting smaller and start-up businesses and increasing the average workload (computers and specialized applications did increase worker capacity but by no more than 20%) and that *reduced the essential analytical and thinking time. That in turn increased error rates. (multi-million dollar errors). The general economic cost is that an industry that since back in the 1920s had facilitated the existence and growth of small and new operations disappeared. It disappeared what had been 20th century entrepreneurs not that any of them used a hundred dollar word to describe themselves. Their industry didn’t disappear or shrink — in fact it grew but became dominated by large corporate operations.
How crazy is that when at the historical point when the MBA suits were preaching entrepreneurship as the way forward it was disappeared from a major industry sector?
We’re about one tenth as drowned in corruption, murder and usury as the Russians. Deplorable.
Probably not. Humans don’t have a great capacity to smell their own shit.
What figure would you give? One quarter, max, and I think that’s a gift. Russians are in a pretty big pile of poop.
Depends on the definition of corruption. People in most countries become so used to practices in their own society (in part because they’ve evolved over decades and centuries) that they accept them as “that’s the way things work” and therefore, have no perception that in a different country they would be categorized as corruption.
The US defense industry is so vast in size and budget that we rarely see even small instances that are easily labeled as corruption. When in fact the corruption is vast.
How can we not see that the campaign funding alone guarantees that few politicians aren’t corrupt? Drives me nuts that Democrats deny that there’s anything untoward about HRC being given $250,000 for a thirty minute private talk to banksters. They sure weren’t paying for her words of wisdom from her (if she had any, she would have used them in her campaign), or that she’s an entertaining speaker (listening to her speak is a chore for most), or that she’s eye-candy.
So, adjusting for cultural, historical and societal differences, the level of corruption in Russia may be on a par with that in the US. Not an excuse for Russian corruption because the lowest possible level of corruption (can’t eliminate it completely because dirty rotten scoundrels always walk among us) is a hallmark of the best functioning societies and their governments. To root out the major and most destructive forms of corruption requires an able and dedicated leader. We’ve been lucky enough to have had a few of those in the past, but it’s been a long time since we’ve seen one and therefore, the rot has continued to mushroom.
So 1/4 or less? Not sure what you are doing, thought we were negotiating the fraction of Russian fascism that US fascism represents. 1/4 is my best offer otherwise I don’t feel you are being realistic. It really sucks to be a social justice warrior in Russia; like fatally.
A worthy summary of one huge node of US corruption:
The Savage Politics of the Oligarchs.
The thing about Russia is that it is Western in the sense that it is part of European civilization, and yet it has not succumbed to Anglo-American domination, as all of the EU and NATO countries have.
Germany used to provide a communitarian/social democratic alternative to Anglo-Saxon liberalism, but now only Russia is left showing that an alternative is possible. So there is this cultural dimension.
There is also the geopolitical dimension that Russia is the only nuclear superpower other than the US. By “nuclear superpower”, I mean that it can withstand a nuclear first strike and still respond with such devastating force that no country would launch a first strike against us. (Other than the US led by Hillary, who seems to believe, along with neocons, that the US could “win” a nuclear war.) What has been going on since the 2000 US coup is that the US has been engaged in the neocon project of cementing its status as the “sole remaining superpower”. Russia and China have decided that it is time to move on to a multipolar world. The reason the Clintonites hate Russia is that it is the most salient other pole. Russia “personifies” the idea that the US is losing its status as world hegemon.
One of the fascinating things about this election is that the Democrats have become the party of the Russia haters. In the 2012 election of course, Democrats mocked Mitt Romney for saying that Russia is America’s greatest enemy, something Hillary obviously believes with all her heart. But Trump has once again made seeing Russia as just another ordinary country acceptable in the mainstream, although the media obviously haven’t adjusted to that yet.
The thing about Russia is that in the hands of a petty little KGB functionary like Putin it could become a genuine threat, at least to Europe. Putin is an evil man but not a great one; think an alternate Third Reich with Himmler as Fuehrer. Basically a ruthless and unforgiving accountant. This is why we need the bare-chested Bond villian bravado; the charisma must all be manufactured because there is none in supply. But he is lethal nonetheless all the more so for his lack of confidence.
The alternative to Anglo-Saxon liberalism that you seem reluctant to name is an unstable oligarchy of banal tossers who would eat each other alive for a sandwich. My earnest geopolitical hope is that they ally with China against the Anglo-Saxon liberal West. They deserve each other. Meanwhile the US prospers while Russia and China sink into distrust and resentment.
Russia has in manpower a smaller military than the EU countries combined and a military budget in the same range as the larger EU countries individually. Putin’s policies are conservative, social conservatism in Russia, economic conservative policies that pretty much upholds the social status quo (unless a oligarch challenges Putin’s power, they get to keep their wealth) and a foreign policy that aims to keep Russia’s bases.
Hitler was a war-loving gambler, Putin is not.
heh — even leftish Americans fail to perceive that about Putin. Understandable because they’ve been reared on a steady diet of movies, TV, books, news, and USG pronouncements that powerful evil masterminds are real which makes it ever so easy for them to stick Putin into that narrative.
Ha. Not that simple; this isn’t the Red Scare, Putin is the fascist this time.
Define fascist. And don’t use Crimea that has been in and out of Russia proper for longer than US states and territories were first appropriated by us through force.
LOL, OK Marie. Fascism is where factions among capital, organs of state security and the media are united in aspiring to establish a tyrannical oligarchy or autocracy and maintain a society where authority resides exclusively in the hands of this elite minority.
Sounds oddly familiar.
Well yes, which is why the 1/10 versus 1/4 discussion was probably a better use of our time.
Probably not a good use of our time either because we have no first hand experience/knowledge of how things work in Russia that would give us an ability to estimate the level of corruption there and we’re too acculturated to see the level in this country. What Putin isn’t is a Teddy Roosevelt and busting up those oligarchs. OTOH, corporate mergers and purchases are creating more and more behemoths and the “too big to fail banks” are bigger than ever.
Not Teddy Roosevelt? That’s an awesome start, Marie.
But is your point that Western media is so untrustworthy that we can’t know “how things work”? This strikes me as an elision for someone of your prosecutorial talent. Seems to me even the manufactured or “managed” news we get from the Russian outlets indicts them. It’s pretty thinly disguised. That’s the problem with Vladimir Surkov’s whole conjuring act; creating confusion is the easy part. The trick is not creating opportunities for adversaries or tempting fate.
Do you think Putin wants Trump to actually win? I sure don’t. I think heads will roll if he does.
We in the US have for decades been living in the anti-Teddy R era.
From what I’ve been able to glean, Russians and people in many countries are far less gullible than Americans as to what politicians and the media dish out. They don’t have much difficulty recognizing BS as BS. Of course they don’t live in a cultural/media landscape that is as sophisticated at propaganda and consumerism as we do.
Would guess that Putin is indifferent to who wins the US election. He appreciates that HRC is hostile towards him and Russia and understands where her animosity comes from. He’s experienced some of that from her while she was SoS and until recently, Obama has been only slightly less hostile towards him. So, it’s familiar to him and a chore for him to navigate. OTOH, he surely appreciates that Trump is an idiot and while Trump may personally be more polite towards him, he knows that there won’t be much difference between those that will call the shots for Trump from those that will call the shots for HRC. Both are scary.
While culturally Russia is much older than out country, we should be sensitive to the fact that politically, socially, and economically it’s still quite young. And it’s development and growth has been retarded first by the devastation it experience in WWII and second by the Cold War that was initiated by us, both before and after WWII. Remember the first rush of big capitalism in this country (the UK, Germany, Japan, etc.) didn’t go so well either. It has to be tamed and it takes time to learn how and what to tame. We aren’t there yet, but soon enough will have to relearn that.
You mean like this:
“Everything is PR”; an opoid of the masses. Sound oddly familiar?
Yeah, right, like he’s not involved in more than one high stakes game of international brinkmanship at the moment. Aleppo, Turkey, Kaliningrad, task force groups in the Mediterranean. This is a big year for Vladimir. Indifference has to be the least likely possibility.
Culturally Russia is as much a source of white supremacist and anti-Semitic ugliness as anywhere and more than most. The infamous Protocols themselves were the deceitfully fabricated by the secret police of the very imperial Motherland Putin aspires to re-establish. And they were written for no other reason than to persecute political enemies. I love Russia and Russians but colour me sceptical about the forces that Putin has harnessed to build his constituencies among them. Many Russians seem unhappy about it too but are probably increasingly unwilling to admit it.
You object to leaders of countries coming to the aid of those they have a long-standing alliance with that is under attack?
Who exactly invaded and destroyed Iraq for the hell of it? Who exactly participated in a violent regime change in Libya (which is now also a disaster)? Who aided and abetted friends using violence to overthrow the government of Syria? And fifteen years in Afghanistan bombing, occupying, etc. has accomplished what?
You sure seem to have some wild double standards.
Well, I didn’t but lets say I did. Are we talking about Syria? I would welcome the opportunity to argue that Putin has completely screwed Assad and would murder him in his bed if it weren’t for the rumblings of discontent from his other tyrant vassal warlords. So happy to have that discussion.
The Bush administration, trivially, as you say, and with a stupidity that has left a crater in international geopolitics that will be discernible for a thousand years hence; Hillary was merely a cowardly triangulator by comparison.
NATO.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Mostly. Israel, looking at you too.
Absolutely nothing save drag the US closer to the event horizon of fascism.
But that double standard thing seems weird after all the diaries where you and I did our anti-colonial, Chomsky thing together. The status quo sucks. Granted. But none of this makes Putin any less of a monster or a threat. He’s a restless, evil, reckless monster and we need to play on his weaknesses; his vanity, lack of self-confidence and his abiding, utter contempt for the West. These are not trivial concerns.
Let’s be clear we are talking about a man who coldly assassinated an enemy with Polonium 210 explicitly because it is such an ineluctable and horrible death; he needed to publicly declare his ruthless monstrousness for the sake of bullying others.
It makes the Nazi threat of hanging with piano wire seem like a reform.
You should take that assassination evidence you have to the UK authorities so they can indict Putin for the murder.
HRC — “We came, we saw, he died.” cackle, cackle. How many cold blooded deaths on the orders of a POTUS do we have on our hands? Not alleged or suspected kill orders but acknowledged orders. Obama hasn’t coldly assassinated an enemy? He maintains a kill list, for god’s sake. WJC did sign off on the order to assassinate Saddam Hussein — didn’t happen because his assassins weren’t good enough. Before the PodestaFile leak, HRC suggested droning Assange. And if she could, I have no doubt she would.
So you’re saying it was not Putin?
No. I’m saying I don’t know nor does anyone else but you for that matter.
I’m also saying that one can’t use different standards for the exact same behavior based on whether it’s done by someone one holds in high regard and someone one has been told to hate.
So nobody knows anything? Sounds like an opportunity for the bad guys. Did you actually read the Vladislav Surkov piece? When you understand that sowing doubt and confusion is the strategy then constant assertions that we “don’t know nor does anyone” is the vacuum into which this post-modernist fascism is decanted. You might want to consider what species of monster you are enabling.
Remember the important thing about “managed democracy” and “sovereign democracy” is that they are not democracy at all. Clever, no? Do you see how sneaky that lie is? A lie which requires a bodyguard of doubt which could be provided by anyone, the siloviki, fellow-travellers in the media and unwitting Right-wing Americans included. Maybe even you. In this dishonest manipulation of an open society they are like Republicans; white-supremacist, anti-Semitic and fascist to the core. No doubt about it.
So this is who you are defending.
Don’t forget the gift of neoliberalism we gave the people after the fall of communism. Like I said, good thing a lot of Russians peasants still know how to garden.
It turned even Jeffery Sachs.
And Sach’s turnabout is looking authentic. I was very cautious in buying his change because flipping from the right to the left is quite rare among those that have benefited from being on the right and even then such a change is generally more of a moderating of their conservatism and not a more complete shift.
My concern is that we are now borrowing political science from Putin’s dystopia.
Disagree completely, the recklessness is what Putin and Hitler share. Crimea, for example. Giving high altitude SAMS to morons would be another case.
You realise he’s a ruthless, genocidal war criminal who murdered his own people?
Given the goal of keeping the fleet base in Crimea, grabbing it while the Ukrainian state was in disarray was a high reward/low risk strategy. Arming and supporting with volunteers (according to Russian oppositional sources) the rebels in East Ukraine is likewise a low risk strategy that keeps Ukraine out of NATO. It will likely settle down as yet another frozen conflict.
If he had embraced risk, he would have sent the deposed Ukrainian president to Crimes to recruit the Ukrainian troops there and return to Kiev with troops (and as much Russian support as needed). Or he could have annexed East Ukraine when leaders there asked for it. He didn’t.
And yes, I remember the war in Chechnya. I also remember that the west could not care less when it went down as Putin was embraced by the West. Much like the current war in Yemen where Saudi Arabia is targeting food production with their bombs. It doesn’t mean Saudi Arabia is led by Hitler or will try to conquer the world.
And murders his own people is the go-to indication for insanity in US foreign discourse, but it is only applied to the enemies of the US. Hasn’t Obama droned US citizens abroad, in effect murdered his own people?
“…grabbing it while the Ukrainian state was in disarray was a high reward/low risk strategy.” Yes, totally agree, but the disarray wasn’t an accident of fate. But to his circle it was reckless; he pulled a Rhineland occupation out of his hat and left his foreign policy people gasping. Not saying he isn’t cunning. But the whole thing, Russian troops in mufti, morons with SA-6 missiles, shooting political opponents in the street… Not exactly the League of Women Voters.
Shorter Putin: “You annex Eastern Russia with the thugs you have, not the thugs you’d like to have.”
So your argument is that because Putin didn’t recruit troops (from among his own regulars? Tartars? LOL) in Crimea and invade Ukraine, a sovereign state, we should consider him some sort of Metternich? I don’t think so. What flavour Kool-aid is that?
Not sure I see how Obama’s murders figure in this, is there a quota? Do we count the apartment bombings?
Hmmm? Do you assert that the people of Crimea were the principal architects of the annexation by their appeals to Mother Russia? Would be interested to hear your views on that.
It’s his recklessness to the regime which places Rutin at most risk, and he must continue because his position is dependant on terrorising his immediate circle; think Al Capone. For this he will sacrifice anything; total unbridled power. Such intoxication with power I assume has shrivelled his nuts like a wether’s. But he is dangerous nonetheless.
How do you mean? From what I can tell his position looks pretty secure.
Sorry “Eastern Russia” meant “Eastern Ukraine”.
No, the Ukrainian troops in Crimea, who the Ukrainian president is commander-in-chief of.
Ukranian News – Defense Ministry: 50% Of Ukrainian Troops In Crimea Defect To Russia
Recruiting those and heading to the capital with the elected president as nominal leader before the new government established itself is what Napoleon or Hitler would have done, but then again they were high-stakes gamblers. Putin isn’t, he goes for securing the naval base.
No. The appeals played a small part in it, but as can clearly be seen by the rebuke of similar appeals in Donbass, it is the naval base that is important.
You are the one who introduced “kills his own people”. I assumed you introduced it to invoke the standard meme of being so insane that he kills his own people, and that this would mean he is not conservative. But I might have misunderstood you.
As I said, a minor power. Which would explain all the hacking and social media skulduggery at a fraction of the investment.
And not near a genuine threat, even to Europe.
Probably not; I think we should offer him the Baltic States for Kaliningrad and flip a coin for Turkey; give Europe time to unwind all her investments there and you can have Turkey and good riddance.
Switching people most of whom don’t want to be in Russia for a naval base? I don’t see how that would make sense from either perspective.
Oh, and welcome to Turkey too. An inroad into NATO involving changing Turkey’s allegiance would bite Putin hard in the long run; Erdogan, who is Hitler, would be an inevitable and very bitter enemy.
Russia, under Putin, can only be contained; it is currently subject to international sanctions for acts of geopolitical aggression and is poised, indeed taunts, that it’s ready for more of the same or worse. How does this square with “once again made seeing Russia as just another ordinary country acceptable in the mainstream.”
Seems more a hypnotic suggestion than an argument, and probably better suited.
Not only.
Germany used to provide a communitarian/social democratic alternative to Anglo-Saxon liberalism…until Anglo-Saxon neo-liberalism (EU bankster accommodating austerity.) eated it. Or is trying to.
Well, serves them right. Some of their “thinkers” came up with the whole notion.
I was thinking more the 1933-45 time frame.
So there you have Russia; once again encircled by potential enemies whom Putin has actively enabled as tyrants or inevitably alerted to his intentions with a navy the size of the Imperial one the day after Tsushima. Minor continental power with blocked options everywhere and a fragile economy. That’s why all the asymmetrical cultural warfare; social media is peanuts. Imaging how little you would have to pay for that!
The Russian regime’s survival, in fact, is as dependent on the price of fossil fuel exports as Venezuela’s, well… Was.
Hmm, maybe telling Venzuelans to learn to grow their own food again is a pretty good idea.
It is what saved Cuba from political chaos.
Russians are a nation of garderners. The last safety net. GMOs are a big issue, even bleeding into foreign policy between them and us.
Of course it is.
This appears to be the correct final take on that Podesta quote:
That’s from that Hotair piece you quoted from and gave a link to.
Dunnwoody: Since you use html for quotes, could you use html for links too, please? I can’t click on those last two links you gave, for whatever reason.
Should be fixed now.
could be they moved the emails to husband’s computer? so as to be able to say they weren’t deleted?
Sure. We only have their claim that it was Weiner’s computer.
I can only see three possibilities:
It is always the Clinton side that is doing the perfidy although we know of many cases in which the FBI actually has cooked the evidence.
It is entirely reasonable for her to believe that whatever the truth the emails would be construed negatively by investigators reporting to GOP investigating committees or Republicans parading as “independent” investigators. And it is likely she suspected that anything at all, even innocent stuff, would be leaked with a sneer.
Because the frame of reference from 1993 is that Hillary Clinton is a crook. Even when they fired a travel office that was leaking like a sieve to the press. “Clinton’s $400 haircut”
Scepticism of only one side because of policy differences with how the Clinton’s played their political situation after the 1994 election.
Remember the GOP is hinting that they very much would like to assassinate Clinton for real if character assassination does not work. Why might that extreme reaction be there?
Odd that there is no mention of the Travel Office “leaking like a sieve.”
Your comment is a fresh reminder of what I came to loathe about the Clintons. They act first on their desires. If a victim or outsider raises questions because on it’s face the action smells hinky, they then lie. When the lies are insufficient to bury the matter, it leads to an investigation by one or more committees, etc. Then the Clintons delay, drag out, and/or obstruct the investigation. Over time everybody gets sick of the whole thing and throw up their hands and nothing is done. Not even about the lies that have been proven to be lies. Exact same MO has been seen on the email issue. (Still frosts me that nothing has been done about her obvious circumvention of FOIA regulations.)
The Travel Office was a simple matter from day one. Clear out the people and have FOBs take over. Not illegal, but it was scummy. Same with Clinton’s Lewinsky dalliance. Given a choice between scummy that’s covered up with lies, etc. to present a fake upstanding face and a “so what” response to perceived scummy, the average person prefers the latter.
you’re right, of course. and The Daily News tracked down the haircut and no flights were disrupted for it at all, but the story was already out there. As far as Monica set up, well yes, and Bill had just lost his mother and was very vulnerable, hence the timing.
You refer to the Clinton act as “scummy.” Not bad. Scummy is as scummy does. And who is apparently the scummiest of all the major characters in this political telenovela?
Right.
Anthony Weiner.
His act makes Bill Clinton look like Mother Teresa.
And now…whose computer is in play?
Weiner’s, of course.
Perfect.
I like #1 above.
I can only guess at the “unidentified reasons”…the motives and actions of a dick photo addict are well past my imagination…but his undoubtedly scummy fingerprints are all over that computer. If the FBI people who are examining it are smart, they’ll wear sterile gloves.
EWWWwww!!!
My country ’tis of thee…
It is Spook 101 to go after sexually deviant people. He’d be tops on the list of any intelligence action against the Clintons, no matter where it came from.
Weiner.
The weak link.
Whatever happened to us?
It’s been straight down the tubes since the ’60s assassinations.
Straight down the tubes.
From RFK and MLK Jr. to Anthony Weiner in increments of Nixonism.
Sad.
AG
Weiner is/ was Abedin’s husband. that’s what I meant
And will remain her husband until long after this matter has been fully disposed of.
Peter Van Buren had his own moustache twitching.
Peter Van Buren, Reuters: Commentary: Does the FBI think Russia hacked Weiner’s computer?
And the 15-year-old girl supposedly sent an open letter to Comey.
David Mack, Buzzfeed: Here’s An Open Letter To Comey From The Teen Who Allegedly Got Sexts From Weiner
How much of this is media hype? How much is real? How much is just partisan ratfucking?
You ask:
All of it.
All three possibilities, plus a near-infinity of others.
Rove to Suskind, 2002:
The same game is still being run, only it is now being run even more efficiently due to the new virtual reality possibilities being daily served up by new tech.
Bet on it.
Yup.
The Old Man of the Mountain was ahead of his time.
Way ahead.
AG
1) Now remember, this didn’t come from “several anonymous government officials.” It’s all made up, just like a spy novel. Because no real Russian intelligence officer could ever have put these pieces together like this.
Why would even a bottom-feeder GOP operative mount a sexting sting operation against AW when he’s already been twice busted in the past and those didn’t touch Abedin much less come close to touching the Clintons? Some things — such as a trove of Abedin’s emails on AW’s computer — wouldn’t occur to others. What makes it even more implausible to a rational mind engaged in ratfucking is that he would use a computer with his wife’s emails on it to sext.
Are you including the Buzzfeed reporters in the imaginary fictional 15 year old conspiracy?
NJcom – Bridgegate verdict: Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly guilty on all counts
Maybe they should have tried to cut a deal.
PodestaFiles 8/26/15 FRM Neera Tanden Don’t snigger to loudly.
Very long and very good summary timeline recap: The Hidden Smoking Gun: the Combetta Cover-Up
I’ll add just one thing because out of curiosity I checked on it some time ago. It was early (Jan/Feb) of 2013 when an HRC staff member sent out a RFP to upgrade/change the clinton-server. That was several weeks before Blumenthal learned that Guccifer had hacked his email account. So, the RFP wasn’t prompted by a new concern about security and as such, appears to have been a normal replacement for an older machine. PRN was awarded the contract in late May or June and started working on it shortly thereafter. Again, didn’t look as if they were in any special hurry to change out the server.