[VIDEO] Clinton Email Search Warrant Unsealed; Little New Revealed
Posted: December 20, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: 2004 United States election voting controversies, Clinton Emails, Democratic National Committee, Democratic Party (United States), Email, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Judge, Fox News, Free Beacon, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, James Comey, media, news, Search warrant, The New York Times, Twitter, Unsealed, video Leave a comment
A newly unsealed search-warrant application confirms the Federal Bureau of Investigation found thousands of emails potentially linked to Hillary Clinton on a laptop used by former congressman Anthony Weiner, who was then married to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
“Mr. Weiner has been under investigation into whether he sent sexually explicit material to an underage girl. The investigation into Mr. Weiner continues, and he hasn’t been charged with any crimes.”
The search warrant application doesn’t offer any new revelations or insight—if anything, it repeats and reaffirms past assertions by officials about the case regarding how and why they decided to search the laptop in the final days of a heated presidential campaign.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
The search-warrant paperwork was unsealed Tuesday—with some redactions—after a California lawyer convinced a New York judge to make public the court document used in an email search that upended the final days of the 2016 race for the White House.
The search warrant was executed in late October on a laptop computer that agents believed was used by both Mr. Weiner and his now-estranged wife, Ms. Abedin. Ms. Abedin is a longtime aide to Mrs. Clinton, including when Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state.
On Capitol Hill, Directors James Comey of the F.B.I., John O. Brennan of the C.I.A. and James R. Clapper Jr. of national intelligence. Credit Alex Wong/Getty Images
Mr. Weiner has been under investigation into whether he sent sexually explicit material to an underage girl. The investigation into Mr. Weiner continues, and he hasn’t been charged with any crimes.
That probe was unrelated to the politically charged investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state. In July, FBI Director James Comey announced the end of the email probe, saying no reasonable prosecutor would file charges, though he criticized “extremely careless’’ behavior at the State Department in handling Mrs. Clinton’s emails, some of which included classified information.
Then, 11 days before the election, Mr. Comey made a surprise announcement, in the form of a letter to Congress, saying federal agents were examining newly discovered emails that might shed new light on the email case. Since the election, Mrs. Clinton and many Democrats have blamed Mr. Comey’s announcement, along with alleged Russian hacking of her campaign’s internal discussions, for her defeat. Read the rest of this entry »
Paul ‘Black Helicopters’ Krugman Speculates on an FBI Virtual ‘Alliance with Putin’
Posted: November 21, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Paranoia, propaganda, Twitter Leave a comment
Bob Bryan reports: Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist, suggested Thursday that an “alliance” between a faction of the FBI and Russian President Vladimir Putin swung last week’s election in favor of Donald Trump.
“So it looks more and more as if we had an election swung, in effect, by a faction of our own security sector in alliance with Putin.”
— Paul Krugman, during a psychotic break, on Twitter
Krugman said that given the small margin in swing states that decided the election, the FBI’s reactivation of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was just enough to change the minds of some voters.
“The economist has frequently taken to Twitter in the days after the election to bemoan the outcome and to draw concern over early policies of Trump.”
FBI Director James Comey announced the discovery of new emails “pertinent” to the case on October 28 — 11 days before the election — before clearing her again a week later.
[Read the actual news item here, at Business Insider]
“As evidence accumulates that Trump benefited from a lot of late deciders breaking his way, the case that it was Comey gets stronger,” Krugman wrote in a tweet.
The US intelligence community publicly accused the Russian government of being behind the hacks of emails of members of Democratic Party organizations and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose electronic communications were released in droves by WikiLeaks during the final weeks of the campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Clinton Staffers Popped Champagne on Election Day Before Loss
Posted: November 18, 2016 Filed under: Food & Drink, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Champagne, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, The New York Times 1 Comment
Hillary Clinton’s aides were so sure she would win that they reportedly popped champagne on the campaign plane on Election Day.
Hours later, instead of becoming the nation’s first female president as polls had predicted, Clinton suffered one of the most stunning political defeats in history, 
and Donald Trump became the new president-elect.
“There is no question that a week from Election Day, Secretary Clinton was poised for a historic win. In the end, late breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome.”
The New York Times reported the champagne element on Saturday, as part of a story that detailed Clinton’s comments echoing a memo from her campaign that blamed her shocking loss on FBI Director James Comey.
“Instead of becoming the nation’s first female president as polls had predicted, Clinton suffered one of the most stunning political defeats in history, and Donald Trump became the new president-elect.”
A mere 11 days before the election, Comey sent a letter notifying Congress that the FBI was looking into new emails related to Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.
The agency discovered the emails while investigating former congressman Anthony Weiner. But the Sunday before Election Day, Comey announced the emails didn’t warrant additional investigation, and again cleared Clinton.
The Clinton campaign and prominent Democrats slammed Comey for his timing, accusing the Republican FBI director of trying to sway the election. Read the rest of this entry »
#HandsUpFakeNews
Posted: November 17, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: 2016, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Media of the United States, United States Department of Justice 1 Comment
Don’t Kid Yourself — Liberals Are Just As Susceptible To Fake News. Their brand may be more sophisticated, but it’s no less harmful.
David Harsanyi writes: No one ever loses an election in America anymore. It’s always some nefarious, shrouded force that’s destabilizing democracy that’s at fault. Now that Democrats have sort of moved on from blaming the Electoral College and James Comey and the Russians, they’re absolutely convinced that “fake news” turned the election against Hillary Clinton (although it’s still a mystery why they lost more than 1,000 other seats since Obamacare was passed).
Of course the Internet is teeming with bogus news. That’s nothing new. Even the smartest people fall for fake stories sometimes. It’s a problem. And of course thinking about how social media affects our democratic institutions is legitimate. But considering how often voters use news — fake or real — to reinforce their pre-existing worldviews, I’m skeptical anyone can quantify how much misinformation matters, or if it matters at all.
That study supposedly showing “Fake News Beat Real News” in the last months of 2016 election–it shows no such thing https://t.co/nxFcFbpMDU
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) November 17, 2016
Moreover, there’s no effective way curate news content in a democratic environment like the Internet or social media. Nor should we try. While the Left is always keen on controlling the flow of news—overturning Citizens United or passing a Fairness Doctrine or handing control of the Internet to the government — we don’t need gatekeepers. Sorry, I don’t trust that people who defended “fake but accurate” stories or put quotations marks around “religious freedom” should be dictating what’s worth talking about or what’s fake. Read the rest of this entry »
America’s Emerging Nationalism Crisis
Posted: November 14, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, History, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Advertising, American Community Survey, Anthony Weiner, Attack ad, Barack Obama, Crime, Democratic Party (United States), Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, James Comey, Republican Party (United States), WikiLeaks 1 Comment
The United States has entered the era of ethnic nationalism replacing ideology in our politics—and there’s no going back.
John R. Schindler writes: The election of Donald Trump as our next president heralds a new political epoch for the United States. Whatever his shortcomings as a candidate, the Republican nominee, a political neophyte, slayed both of the political dynasties that had more or less run our national life for the last three decades. There won’t be anyone named Bush or Clinton around the White House for a good long while now. This is no mean feat, not to mention something for which all Americans who dislike dynasties should be grateful.
“Whatever one thinks of James Comey, who has managed to offend both right and left in recent months, the notion that his investigation of Hillary’s emails, rather than her own mistakes as secretary of state—the steadfast refusal to use government email for government work, her ‘private’ server of bathroom infamy, all the highly classified information that wound up in her ‘unclassified’ emails, not to mention her innumerable lies about it all—constituted the real problem in EmailGate reeks of the purest Clintonism.”
How Trump did it is being hotly debated. True to form, Hillary Clinton has announced that her loss is all the fault of the FBI and its director, whose eleventh-hour reopening of her email scandal sank her at the ballot box. Whatever one thinks of James Comey, who has managed to offend both right and left in recent months, the notion that his investigation of Hillary’s emails, rather than her own mistakes as secretary of state—the steadfast refusal to use government email for government work, her “private” server of bathroom infamy, all the highly classified information that wound up in her “unclassified” emails, not to mention her innumerable lies about it all—constituted the real problem in EmailGate reeks of the purest Clintonism.
“This was more of the Marxistoid ‘right side of History’ blather that Team Obama has indulged in for the last eight years—and it was utterly wrong. To the surprise of no one who understands human nature, many whites didn’t appreciate being told that they had to die off for ‘progress’ to be achieved.”
Democrats are also pointing a finger at Moscow, claiming that its secret ties to the Trump campaign plus the clandestine help of Wikileaks, whose massive dumps of Democratic emails painted Team Hillary in a highly unfavorable light, ultimately did in Clinton, Inc. Here they’re on somewhat firmer ground. Kremlin interference played a role in the campaign—exactly how much will be debated for decades—in a manner that should trouble all Americans.
“They didn’t like being derided by their betters as ‘bitter clingers’ with their guns and Bibles, and they especially didn’t like being termed ‘deplorables’ unworthy of compassion or consideration.”
That said, there’s not much to deny here, since Moscow has now admitted its previously hush-hush ties to Wikileaks and its contacts with members of the Trump campaign. Moreover, those who are now so eager to find Russians under every bed in Washington are the same people who pooh-poohed warnings about Wikileaks and the Kremlin—I was issuing them years ago—as scaremongering. It’s too late now, the election’s over. Time to move on, learn lessons, and accept the people’s verdict.
[Read the full text here, at Observer]
Some Americans are clearly not ready to move on. Their radical fringe has been fighting in the streets, rioting and burning trees to show their displeasure, thereby proving true all the nasty things that Trump has said about the nut-left. The ugly nature of these outbursts has many wondering what has happened to the country. However, when Democratic leaders publicly denounce Trump and the Republicans as the party of “hate” it’s not surprising that the country’s perennially aggrieved lumpenriot contingent takes action.
Welcome to the Al-Sharptonization of the Democratic Party
“It cannot be denied that ethno-racial concerns played a role here—and that it was the Democrats who opened that can of worms.”
At a certain level, how Trump won is so simple that most pundits—the same people who gave the president-elect no chance of winning—can’t see it. The Republican nominee got enough white votes—especially among the working class, particularly in the upper Mid-West—to offset huge Democratic advantages among minorities and white professionals. This was the Sailer Strategy, named after the insightful blogger who coined the notion back in 2000. Steve Sailer’s essential idea, that the GOP needed to max out the white vote to keep winning national elections in the face of changing demographics, was rejected by most Republicans as smacking of racism.
[Read the full story here, at Observer]
It cannot be stated too many times that the GOP establishment repeatedly rejected Sailerism. Indeed, leading Republicans often seemed to run in the other direction from its commonsense logic. The facts are clear: that Mitt Romney failed to get many votes from working-class whites in the very places where Trump just attracted them in droves caused the GOP to lose the White House in 2012.
Read the rest of this entry »
Presidential Election 2016: A New Yorker Magazine Editor’s Tragedy
Posted: November 9, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Barack Obama, Classified information, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Kellyanne Conway 2 Comments
‘The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness’
There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted.
[Read the entire, self-serving, vicious, inflated, bloated, painful, ridiculous, hysterical, ignorant, hateful rant here, at The New Yorker]
The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.
Early on Election Day, the polls held out cause for concern, but they provided sufficiently promising news for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and even Florida that there was every reason to think about celebrating the fulfillment of Seneca Falls, the election of the first woman to the White House. Potential victories in states like Georgia disappeared, little more than a week ago, with the F.B.I. director’s heedless and damaging letter to Congress about reopening his investigation and the reappearance of damaging buzzwords like “e-mails,” “Anthony Weiner,” and “fifteen-year-old girl.” But the odds were still with Hillary Clinton.
All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Dr K: Clinton Investigation ‘Revives Everything That Had Been Buried & Banished’
Posted: November 5, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, James Comey, Message transfer agent 3 Comments
Asked about polling numbers that show major problems for Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness, Charles Krauthammer argued that the renewed FBI investigation contributes to that, but that it probably will not be enough to swing the election.
That’s all a reflection of the Comey recount. I mean, this is all the aftereffects of that bomb. A lot — some of it is WikiLeaks, but I don’t think Wikileaks had a dramatic affect. There’s also the Obamacare rise in the premiums really affecting people with their wallets. It was the fact that the charge is now revived. She’s under investigation. Criminal investigation. Here she is. In the ads, Trump is saying she’s under criminal investigation.
On Capitol Hill, Directors James Comey of the F.B.I., John O. Brennan of the C.I.A. and James R. Clapper Jr. of national intelligence. Credit Alex Wong/Getty Images
That revives everything that had been buried and banished when he gave her this sort of semi-exoneration in July. That’s what we’re seeing. Look, all you have do is to say that if nationally — if everywhere he loses a point or two or three, which he certainly has and probably more, nationwide that shifts a whole bunch of states into different categories. That accounts for what we’re seeing. I suspect the effect of that is now attenuated. This is not a growing influence on the campaign. It’s probably spent so that unless there is another revelation, another shocking WikiLeak, it could stabilize it right where it is and we end up with your scenario, which is a Clinton squeaker.
FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe
Posted: October 30, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Classified information, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Terry McAuliffe, Twitter 1 Comment
Devlin Barrett reports: As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
“The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the teenager.”
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
“In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.”
The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.
The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the previous probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.
The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the teenager.
“At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.”
In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.
At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said. Read the rest of this entry »
Did She, or Didn’t She? Huma Abedin Swore Under Oath She Gave Up ‘All the Devices’ With State Department Emails
Posted: October 29, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Classified information, CNN, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Jason Chaffetz, The New York Times 3 Comments
The FBI found emails pertinent to its Clinton investigation, reportedly on a computer from her aide’s home. That doesn’t jibe with she told lawyers this summer.
M. L. Nestel and Jackie Kucinich report: In a normal election year, a normal candidate’s close aide who caused even minor embarrassment to a campaign so near to Election Day would be whisked away as quickly as possible to avoid becoming a distraction.
But Huma Abedin is not simply a close aide, she’s a critical member of Hillary Clinton’s tiny inner circle that protects and — at times — enables the deeply flawed and secretive Democratic nominee.
So despite FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the bureau is reviewing emails from Abedin’s time at the State Department reportedly found on a laptop she shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband Anthony Weiner (confiscated as a part of the FBI’s investigation into allegations he sexted with a 15-year-old North Carolina girl), the campaign made clear on Saturday that she’s not going anywhere.
John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, told reporters on a conference call that Abedin had been nothing but cooperative with investigators and sat for hours of depositions last summer as part of the civil lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.
“There’s nothing that she’s done that we think calls into question anything that she’s done with respect to this investigation… we fully stand behind her,” Podesta said.
But the new information that the FBI found State Department-related email on her home laptop also calls into question whether Abedin in fact turned over all of the devices she used to send and receive email while working at State.
[Read the full text here, at The Daily Beast]
On June 28, 2016, Abedin said under oath in a sworn deposition that she looked for all devices that she thought contained government work on them so the records could be given to the State Department. (These records were subsequently reviewed by the FBI.)
“How did you go about searching for what records you may have in your possession to be returned to the State Department?” Attorney Ramona Cotca for Judicial Watch asked her.
“I looked for all the devices that may have any of my State Department work on it and returned — returned — gave them to my attorneys for them to review for all relevant documents. And gave them devices and paper,” Abedin answered.
Cotca then asked Abedin specifically what devices she gave her attorneys.
“If memory serves me correctly, it was two laptops, a BlackBerry, and some files that I found in my apartment,” Abedin said, adding the BlackBerry was associated with her Clintonemail.com account.
Abedin maintained that she was “not involved in the process” of what records on her devices would be given to the State Department.
Man of the Year: Anthony Weiner
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Classified information, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, James Comey, Patrick F. Kennedy, United States Department of State 4 Comments
Andrew Buncombe reports: The of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private computer server were reportedly uncovered after it seized electronic devices belonging to aide Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
The New York Times said on Friday that law enforcement officials had revealed it was the seizure of the devices, and the discovery of emails that were previously not part of the FBI investigation, that had triggered the bureau’s .
The FBI informed Congress on Friday it was investigating whether there was classified information in the new emails. The FBI said in July that its investigation was finished.
However, reports said the emails were not from the former secretary of state’s private device, but from those belonging to her top aide and her ex-husband. Mr Weiner is being investigated amid allegations he sent sexual messages to a 15-year-old girl.
Ms Clinton and aide Huma Abedin – Justin Sullivan/Getty
The Associated Press said that in his letter to congressional leaders, FBI Director James Comey said the new emails that had come to light recently had prompted investigators to reopen its probe.
In his letter, Mr Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case – now said to be the investigation into Mr Wiener’s alleged sexting – and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation”. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Krauthammer: ‘Hard to Deny That There Is a Quid Pro Quo’ between the FBI and State Department
Posted: October 17, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Director of National Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Jason Chaffetz, United States Congress, United States Department of Justice, United States Department of State 1 Comment
Charles Krauthammer said that newly released documents show that the FBI’s coordination with the State Department on the Hillary Clinton case indicates corruption.
“There are so many ironies here. The first is that this is probably normal procedure inside any administration, inside a bureaucracy: trading off favors, trading off probably shady maneuvers. But the problem is this — the charge that Republicans, Trump in particular, are making against Hillary Clinton is precisely that she represents business as usual. You can defend Clinton and say saying ‘Oh, this goes on all the time,’ but that’s the point. They are trying to wipe away this sort of culture of corruption. It is hard to deny that there is a quid pro quo, or at least one was proposed, when the phrase ‘quid pro quo’ is used to describe the transaction in the documents.”
“This is the ‘camera and sausage’ factor. I don’t think that we should be shocked that this happens in any bureaucracy, but once you see it in black in white, and you hear the charge that Clinton represents business as usual — and corrupt business as usual — that, I think, accentuates the charge, and makes it a very serious one.”
WikiLeaks Cancels Major Announcement Due to ‘Security Concerns’
Posted: October 2, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Global, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Arrest warrant, Democratic National Committee, Embassy of Ecuador, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks 4 Comments
Assange may be deliberately stoking anticipation about the announcement.
Rick Moran writes:
…The hacking group WikiLeaks has cancelled a highly anticipated announcement set for Tuesday due to “security concerns.”
[Read the full story here, at PJ Media]
The announcement was set to be made…(read more)
Hillary Clinton on Assange “Can’t we just drone this guy” — report https://t.co/S7tPrl2QCZ pic.twitter.com/qy2EQBa48y
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 3, 2016
Wikileaks has abruptly canceled a much-anticipated announcement on Tuesday, according to NBC News. The announcement had been expected to be founder Julian Assange’s long-promised document dump on Hillary Clinton. NBC’s Jesse Rodriguez reported that the Tuesday announcement — which was to come from the balcony of London’s Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange has sought sanctuary for years – was canceled due to “security concerns”.
Wikileaks has not said when it will now make its “announcement”.
Assange appeared on Fox News last month, repeating his assertion that Wikileaks has damaging documents on Clinton and suggested…(read more)
“Security concerns”? In the middle of London? Assange may be deliberately stoking anticipation about the announcement. Or, he may fear for his life..(read more)
Hillary Clinton strategist Bob Beckel called for WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange to be assassinated. #DNCLeak pic.twitter.com/9L2ixl24Er
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 10, 2016
[VIDEO] Trey Gowdy to FBI Director Comey: ‘What more would Hillary Clinton have had to do to get you to prosecute her?’
Posted: September 29, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Andrew C. McCarthy, Classified information, Defendant, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal crime in the United States, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Gross negligence, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Interrogation 2 Comments
Allapundit writes:
…Gowdy’s point is the same now as it was then. Isn’t destroying evidence and then lying about it the best evidence of criminal intent insofar as it reveals a guilty mind? Because that’s what we have here — deleted emails, wiped servers, and then a series of public lies by Hillary about whether she’d ever dealt with classified information on her private system. What more would you need to have seen from her by way of suspicious behavior, he asks Comey, to conclude that she really did know all along that she was mishandling classified information and therefore is guilty even under Comey’s own standard of intent? Comey … has no good answer. Yes, he says, it’s true that concealing evidence is a strong indicator of bad intent, but we need to look at what the suspect has said, too. Which is Gowdy’s point: The false exculpatory statements Clinton has made publicly are further proof that she’s concealing the truth. We also need to look at whether anyone’s been prosecuted for this particular crime before, notes Comey.
That’s all that seems left of his decision not to charge her now. He’s not forcefully disputing Gowdy’s claim that Hillary knowingly, not just negligently, mishandled classified information. All he’s saying when you boil it down is that if no one’s gone to prison for this before, it’d be unfair to send Clinton to prison for it now. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Dr. Charles Krauthammer: FBI ‘Were Not Going to Indict the Democratic Candidate for the Presidency’
Posted: September 29, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Classified information, Democratic Party (United States), Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Trump, Fox News Channel, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, James Comey 2 Comments
Impressed by the lack of a prosecution in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal, Charles Krauthammer contended that the FBI had an understanding that they could not indict the Democratic nominee, and he also said that it is possible Obama will pardon all those remaining who were involved.
“It looks awful. Normally you give immunity so you can prosecute. You may lose the case but at least you prosecute. There’s not even a prosecution. The impression left is — and we probably will never know — it was understood. Not said, not written, not e-mailed, but it was understood: We were not going to indict the Democratic candidate for the presidency, and thus everything else followed.”
“And the close aides are getting immunity as well. It looks very suspicious. I credit Comey’s sincerity, but I don’t know what role he played.”
“The one thing I would say is that if she wins I think it is possible that Obama will pardon the remaining high officials who are going to end up in office with her, as a way out of this, because otherwise this could pursue her and pursue them into her presidency. Remember Watergate came after, long after reelection. There’s a fuse here that I think will remain lit otherwise.”
Source: The Corner
James Comey’s Clinton Immunity Coverup
Posted: September 28, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Barack Obama, Breitbart News, Cheryl Mills, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Message transfer agent, United States Department of State 1 Comment
More questions about the FBI’s special handling of the email case.
FBI Director James Comey appears Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where he’ll get another chance to explain his agency’s double standard regarding Hillary Clinton. His probe of the former Secretary of State’s private email server is looking more like a kid-glove exercise with each new revelation.
House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz on Friday disclosed that the FBI granted immunity to Mrs. Clinton’s top aides as part of its probe into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information. According to Mr. Chaffetz, this “limited” immunity was extended to former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and senior adviser Heather Samuelson, in order to get them to surrender their laptops, which they’d used to sort through Mrs. Clinton’s work-versus-personal emails.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
Why the courtesy? “If the FBI wanted any other Americans’ laptops, they would just go get them—they wouldn’t get an immunity deal,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told Politico. He’s right. The FBI merely had to seek a subpoena or search warrant. By offering immunity, the FBI exempted the laptops and their emails as potential evidence in a criminal case.
Beth Wilkinson, who represents Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson, says the immunity deals were designed to protect her clients against any related “classification” disputes. This is an admission that both women knew their unsecure laptops had been holding sensitive information for more than a year. Meanwhile, Mr. Comey also allowed Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson to serve as lawyers for Mrs. Clinton at her FBI interview—despite having been interviewed as witnesses and offered immunity. Read the rest of this entry »
Friday Night FBI Document Dump: Obama Used a Pseudonym in Emails with Clinton
Posted: September 23, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, attorney-client privilege, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, Muslim Brotherhood, Pay to play, United States Department of State 5 Comments
The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents on Clinton’s email investigation.
President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday.
The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
The 189 pages the bureau released includes interviews with some of Clinton’s closest aides, such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills; senior State Department officials; and even Marcel Lazar, better known as the Romanian hacker “Guccifer.”
In an April 5, 2016 interview with the FBI, Abedin was shown an email exchange between Clinton and Obama, but the longtime Clinton aide did not recognize the name of the sender.
“Once informed that the sender’s name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: ‘How is this not classified?'” the report says. “Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president’s use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email.”
The State Department has refused to make public that and other emails Clinton exchanged with Obama. Lawyers have cited the “presidential communications privilege,” a variation of executive privilege, in order to withhold the messages under the Freedom of Information Act.
The report doesn’t provide more details on the contents of that particular email exchange, but says it took place on June 28, 2012, and had the subject line: “Re: Congratulations.” It may refer to the Supreme Court’s ruling that day upholding a key portion of the Obamacare law.
A report on the FBI’s June 7, 2016 interview with “Guccifer” confirms FBI Director James Comey‘s claim that Lazar falsely asserted that he’d surreptitiously accessed Clinton’s server.
“Lazar began by stating that he had never claimed to hack the Clinton server. [An FBI agent] then advised that Fix News had recently published an article which reported that Lazar had claimed to have to Clinton server. Read the rest of this entry »
Disgraced FBI Director Comey Refused to Testify on Clinton Emails
Posted: September 13, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Classified information, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Interrogation, Jason Chaffetz, Republican Party (United States), United States Congress, United States Department of State, United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 2 Comments
Chaffetz called the hearing to question officials about why whole and partial documents had been withheld from Congress, including unclassified files.
Sarah Westwood reports: FBI Director James Comey refused to attend a classified briefing with the House Oversight Committee despite receiving an invitation to testify about the bureau’s reluctance to disclose thousands of pages of evidence compiled in its year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email use.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s top Democrat, said Monday that Comey had declined to appear at the meeting because he had “already bent over backwards” to explain the FBI’s decision-making in the Clinton email case.
But Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the Oversight Committee, disputed the suggestion that he had invited Comey to the public hearing on redactions in notes from the Clinton email case, noting he had discussed specific points of concern in a personal phone call with the FBI director but had not issued a subpoena for Comey’s presence at the hearing.
Chaffetz called the hearing to question officials about why whole and partial documents had been withheld from Congress, including unclassified files.
“I don’t expect to have to issue a subpoena to see unclassified information,” Chaffetz said. Read the rest of this entry »
BLACKOUT: Hillary 9-11 Video Unplugged
Posted: September 12, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Censorship, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Associated Press, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, Democratic Party (United States), Drudge Report, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Fox News Channel, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, HRC, Matt Drudge, Mollie Hemingway, RT (TV network), Twitter, United States Department of State, video, YouTube 1 Comment
!! RT @AP: The AP has deleted a tweet of video of Hillary Clinton after the 9/11 memorial ceremony as we no longer have distribution rights.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 12, 2016
The video of Hillary Clinton fainting and collapsing has been deleted by the Associated Press and YouTube channels are getting copyright strikes from the “rights holder,” a company called Storyful, whose CEO is a former Morgan Stanly Wall Street Banker. Media analyst Mark Dice has the story.
Update: Drudgereport has updated its front page with an alternate link
‘Comey’s Agents Were Forgiving About Some Incriminating Evidence’
Posted: September 8, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Bill Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, CNN, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Emmet G. Sullivan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Judicial Watch, United States Department of State 5 Comments
The FBI’s Blind Clinton Trust.
The closer we look at the FBI’s investigative file on Hillary Clinton’s emails, the more we wonder if Director James Comey always intended to let her off the hook. The calculated release before the long Labor Day weekend suggests political favoritism, and the report shows the FBI didn’t pursue evidence of potential false statements, obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence.
“The notes also show the G-men never did grill Mrs. Clinton on her “intent” in setting up her server. Instead they bought her explanation that it was for personal convenience. This helped Mr. Comey avoid concluding that her purpose was to evade statutes like the Federal Records Act. Mr. Comey also told Congress that indicting her without criminal intent would pose a constitutional problem.”
Mr. Comey’s concessions start with his decision not to interview Mrs. Clinton until the end of his investigation, a mere three days before he announced his conclusions. Regular FBI practice is to get a subject on the record early then see if his story meshes with what agents find. In this case they accepted Mrs. Clinton’s I-don’t-recall defenses after the fact.
“Ms. Mills has a particular reason for denying early knowledge of the server: She became Mrs. Clinton’s personal lawyer after they both left State. If Ms. Mills knew about the server while at State, she’d be subject to questions about the server. But if she didn’t know about the server until leaving State, she can argue that conversations with Mrs. Clinton are protected by attorney-client privilege. The FBI ignored all this, and it even allowed Ms. Mills to accompany Mrs. Clinton to her FBI interview as Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer.”
The notes also show the G-men never did grill Mrs. Clinton on her “intent” in setting up her server. Instead they bought her explanation that it was for personal convenience. This helped Mr. Comey avoid concluding that her purpose was to evade statutes like the Federal Records Act. Mr. Comey also told Congress that indicting her without criminal intent would pose a constitutional problem. But Congress has written many laws that don’t require criminal intent, and negligent homicide (for example) has never been unconstitutional.
The FBI notes also blow past evidence that Clinton advisers may have engaged in a cover-up. Consider page 10 of the FBI report: “Clinton’s immediate aides, to include [Huma] Abedin, [Cheryl] Mills, Jacob Sullivan, and [redacted] told the FBI they were unaware of the existence of the private server until after Clinton’s tenure at State or when it became public knowledge.”
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
That’s amazing given that Ms. Abedin had her own email account on the private server. It is also contradicted by page 3: “At the recommendation of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s long-time aide and later Deputy Chief of Staff at State, in or around fall 2008, [ Bill Clinton aide Justin] Cooper contacted Bryan Pagliano . . . to build the new server system and to assist Cooper with the administration of the new server system.”
The FBI must also have ignored two emails referred to by the State Inspector General showing Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin discussing the server while they worked at State: “hrc email coming back—is server okay?” Ms. Mills asked Ms. Abedin and Mr. Cooper in a Feb. 27, 2010 email. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Disgraced FBI Director James Comey Gets Defensive About Timing of Clinton Investigation Labor Day Document Dump
Posted: September 7, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Clinton Foundation, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, James Comey, Labor Day, Republican Party (United States), United States Department of Justice 1 Comment
FBI Director James Comey is defending the bureau’s Friday afternoon release of documents from the Hillary Clinton email investigation, saying “we don’t play games” and that the documents were put out when ready.
…Comey said he briefly considered holding the documents until after the Labor Day holiday, knowing that the Friday afternoon release would likely prompt criticism. He also said more document releases are coming.
We don’t play games. So we released it Friday. We are continuing to process more material and will release batches of documents as they are ready, no matter the day of the week,” Comey said.
He concluded the memo by writing, “Those suggesting that we are ‘political’ or part of some ‘fix’ either don’t know us, or they are full of baloney (and maybe some of both).
[Read the full text here, at CNNPolitics.com]
On Tuesday, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized the FBI’s handling of the matter, accusing the bureau of playing politics with the release. Read the rest of this entry »
A Rotting Banana Republic
Posted: September 5, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Politics, White House | Tags: Benghazi, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, CNN, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy 2 Comments
Jed Babbin writes:
“…The defining characteristics of banana republics are a matter of history. First, the law is not enforced against a chosen class in a banana reps…blic, usually the allies of the autocrat in charge. Second, foreign policy is always performed in the autocrat’s interests and often in disregard of the nation’s actual interests. This describes how
America functions in the era of President Obama.
The newly-released FBI documents on the investigation of Hillary Clinton make it clear beyond argument that the fix was in and that the FBI never had any intention of recommending that she should be prosecuted for her crimes.
That is very hard to write. I have had very good friends among the agents of the FBI, men of unshakeable dedication to the fair enforcement of the law. But that is no longer the FBI’s goal, as just a few references to the documents published last week reveal. Read the rest of this entry »
The Devil’s Cupcake: Meet the Mastermind Behind Clinton’s Massive Email Coverup
Posted: September 4, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, New York Post, Paul Sperry, United States, United States Department of State, White House, White House Chief of Staff 4 Comments
Despite signs Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills obstructed efforts by investigators to obtain Clinton’s emails, the FBI invited Mills to attend Hillary’s interview at FBI headquarters as one of her lawyers.
Paul Sperry reports: Newly released FBI documents detailing the bureau’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails reveal the aide who would likely follow her into the White House as chief counsel was central to a cover-up of evidence sought by investigators.
“It’s absolutely outrageous. The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence,” he added, “and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let her sit in on the interview.”
— Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President
Yet despite signs Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills obstructed efforts by investigators to obtain Clinton’s emails, the FBI invited Mills to attend Hillary’s interview at FBI headquarters as one of her lawyers.
[Kaine Hammered Over Clinton Email Report, Falsely Claims She Used One Device for Email]
“It’s absolutely outrageous,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
“The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence,” he 
added, “and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let her sit in on the interview.”
[Order Paul Sperry’s book “The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession” from Amazon.com
The smoking gun is on page 16 of the FBI’s 47-page report. It details how Mills ultimately made the determinations about which emails should be preserved before she and Clinton decided to delete the rest as “personal.” Clinton conducted both government and personal business using a personal email account — clintonemail.com — tied to an unsecured server set up in the basement of her New York home.
The FBI makes clear the procedure Mills used to sort out the emails was suspicious.
“The whole thing was designed to keep Clinton Foundation emails away from investigators.”
For starters, Mills was the one who ordered the server host to move the emails from the server to a laptop where she could screen them. She told investigators she could “not recall” if emails with non-gov addresses were included in the transfer. It’s unlikely they were, because an aide who helped her search told the FBI she only screened for emails sent to or from Clinton with .gov and .mil — not .com — addresses.
[Read the full story here, at the New York Post]
That means messages involving government business between Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin — the only aide who had an email account on the clintonemail.com system— were not likely captured. Nor were messages sent between Clinton and Mills and other aides using personal email addresses.
“The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let [Mills] sit in on the interview.”
– Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President
Correspondence between Clinton and Abedin (who regularly emailed her boss from huma@clintonemail.com and HAbedin@hillaryclinton.com) is crucial, Fitton says, because Abedin acted as the go-between on requests for access to Clinton from shady foreign Clinton Foundation donors. He says the mushrooming “pay-for-play” scandal is the real reason the former secretary of state set up a private email system in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
Hillary Stonewall Clinton Told FBI She (Cough) ‘Couldn’t Recall’ Key Details 26 Times
Posted: September 4, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Classified information, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, IPad Mini, Muslim Brotherhood, Special access program, United States Department of State 3 Comments
…Clinton could not even recall when she got her security clearance. She told FBI agents she wasn’t sure if she carried it over from the U.S. Senate or if she got it from State. But perhaps even worse, Clinton told FBI agents she couldn’t even remember any briefing or training by State “related to the retention of federal records or handling of classified information.”
That admission could raise the question if Clinton was ever trained at all in handling secret information.
Below is the list of things Clinton could not recall in the FBI interview:
- When she received security clearance
- Being briefed on how to handle classified material
- How many times she used her authority to designate items classified
- Any briefing on how to handle very top-secret “Special Access Program” material
- How to select a target for a drone strike
- How the data from her mobile devices was destroyed when she switched devices
- The number of times her staff was given a secure phone
- Why she didn’t get a secure Blackberry
- Receiving any emails she thought should not be on the private system
- Did not remember giving staff direction to create private email account
- Getting guidance from state on email policy
- Who had access to her Blackberry account
- The process for deleting her emails
- Ever getting a message that her storage was almost full
- Anyone besides Huma Abedin being offered an account on the private server
- Being sent information on state government private emails being hacked
- Receiving cable on State Dept personnel securing personal email accounts
- Receiving cable on Bryan Pagliano upgrading her server
- Using an iPad mini
- An Oct. 13, 2012, email on Egypt with Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal
- Jacob Sullivan using personal email
- State Department protocol for confirming classified information in media reports
- Every briefing she received after suffering concussions
- Being notified of a FOIA request on Dec. 11, 2012
- Being read out of her clearance
- Any further access to her private email account from her State Department tenure after switching to her HRCoffice.com account
Martha Stewart wishes she’d thought of saying “I don’t recall” to FBI agents.
pundit from another planet 