[NYP] Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureaus reputation for uncompromising investigations with his "cowardly" whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private e-mail server.
Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, "So if I blew it, they blew it, too."
But agents say Comey tied investigator's hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.
"In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews," said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer-investigations unit.
Instead of going to prosecutors and insisting on using grand jury leverage to compel testimony and seize evidence, Comey allowed immunity for several key witnesses, including potential targets.
The immunity agreements came with outrageous side deals, including preventing agents from searching for any documents on a Dell laptop owned by former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills generated after Jan. 31, 2015, when she communicated with the server administrator who destroyed subpoenaed e-mails.
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Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureaus reputation. They've got this right. Fraud, waste and abuse. Better check any connections between the Clinton Money-Laundering Foundation and DOJ/FBI. I'm certain the MSM will get on this right away with some hard-hitting investigative journalism (sarc and PO'd).
#2
J Comey is on the board of HSBC, and his brother Peter does the Clinton's taxes. His firm is a top Hillary contributor, above Goldman Sachs but below Soros. I'm waiting for her to release her tax records....enter it as an epitaph on my tombstone, will ya?
Posted by: One Eyed Speaking for Boskone7919 ||
10/07/2016 9:34 Comments ||
Top||
Tim Kaine repeatedly defended Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. "The FBI did an investigation," he said at one point, "and they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further." But such a statement is credible only if it follows a real criminal investigation--that is, the sort of investigation that the FBI and the Justice Department conduct when they actually care about a case and want convictions.
We know all too well what that kind of investigation looks like, as two of the lawyers who defended a recent target: former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. That story had a happy ending for the governor and his wife. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in their favor this summer and all charges were dropped in September. But their victory certainly wasn’t due to lack of investigatory zeal on the part of the FBI and Justice Department.
Below are only a few of the heavy-handed tactics federal investigators used to build their case against the McDonnells. See how they compare to how Mrs. Clinton was treated.
Conduct ambush interviews. The first contact between law enforcement and the McDonnells was an ambush interview of the governor’s wife. The agents lied to her about the topic of the meeting, forbade Gov. McDonnell’s staff from attending, and then grilled her on their suspicions about potential public corruption. Statements from that interview later took center stage in the trial of her and her husband.
In Mrs. Clinton’s case, no ambush interviews were conducted, and witnesses were generously accommodated. The FBI and Justice Department even allowed a fact witness and potential target— Cheryl Mills, formerly the State Department’s chief of staff—to simultaneously represent Mrs. Clinton as her counsel.
Immunize only witnesses who can help deliver convictions. One person in Gov. McDonnell’s case got immunity: Jonnie Williams, the prosecution’s star witness. For his testimony, Mr. Williams earned a wealth of blanket immunity—not simply from potential bribery prosecution but also from unrelated crimes he might have committed (including securities and tax fraud). Reluctant witnesses—Gov. McDonnell’s children and friends—were called before a grand jury and forced to testify.
Contrast that with Mrs. Clinton’s case. Much of her staff was immunized in exchange for simply meeting with investigators. None of them appear to have been pressed for information, or given any incentive whatsoever to spill on the boss.
Investigate and charge all potential crimes. Prosecutors in Gov. McDonnell’s case collected more than five million pages of documents and filed charges for every potential crime they could. In addition to the corruption charges, the governor and his wife were accused of lying to banks and obstructing justice. The jury acquitted the McDonnells of the former, and the trial judge ruled there was insufficient evidence of the latter. But the prosecutors pursued these charges vigorously, despite their lack of merit.
For Mrs. Clinton, there appears to have been no investigation into crimes beyond the mishandling of classified information. In particular, the FBI seems to have readily accepted Ms. Mills’s claim that she did not learn about Mrs. Clinton’s private server until after both of them had left the government. This is implausible on its face, since the two were in regular email contact while working at the State Department. It is also contradicted by a witness who administered the server, as well as by Ms. Mills’s own emails. These sorts of inconsistencies were enough to get Mrs. McDonnell, Scooter Libby—former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff—and others indicted for allegedly covering up crimes. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, they weren’t even investigated.
Construe “corruption” broadly. Investigators of Gov. McDonnell took the most expansive possible reading of the law. They argued to the Supreme Court this spring that it was a felony for the governor to arrange meetings between a benefactor and other government officials, even without trying to sway the ultimate decision.
Yet the FBI appears to have done no investigation into how Secretary Clinton’s conduct while in office was affected by massive donations to the Clinton Foundation or large payments for speeches given by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Journalists have unearthed extensive evidence of special treatment: The Associated Press reported that during the first half of her tenure, Mrs. Clinton had meetings or phone calls scheduled with 154 private interests; 85 were Clinton Foundation donors, who in total had pledged or given as much as $156 million.
Claim that concealment proves consciousness of guilt. In Gov. McDonnell’s case, there was no evidence—none—that he ever suspected his conduct could be criminal. Prosecutors tried to show criminal intent by arguing that he “hid” gifts by declining to list them on annual disclosure forms. But Gov. McDonnell complied with Virginia’s disclosure requirements in virtually all respects. The law simply did not require much information to be disclosed. Further, many of his family and staff knew about the gifts. Still, prosecutors claimed that failure to tell the public sufficed to prove a guilty mind.
FBI Director James Comey said that in Mrs. Clinton’s case there was no evidence of criminal intent. Yet she set up a private email server in her basement and permanently deleted thousands of the emails it contained. A plausible motive would be shielding her activities from public scrutiny. The Comey standard—that direct evidence of knowing criminality is needed to prosecute—is certainly not the one that his agency and the Justice Department applied to Gov. McDonnell for more than three years.
To be clear, we aren’t endorsing these heavy-handed tactics, many of which are befitting Inspector Javert of “Les Misérables.” But these are the sorts of things investigators do when they are serious about bringing criminal charges. In deciding whether the investigation into Mrs. Clinton was a real one—as opposed to a grand, expensive spectacle of law-enforcement theater—Gov. McDonnell’s treatment is instructive.
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One person's comments to the above WSJ article:
It's clear egregious tactics were used against McConnell as he would have been a major republican contender for president. The Obama administration had already set up and eliminated Gen Petraeus as an Eisenhower type contender for the republican ticket. Plus he had integrity. A few American still have integrity. Next they do nothing against Hillary when what she did - Benghazi. The Arab Spring. Assassination of ghadaffi. The Clinton foundation. The clintons offshore assets. The illegal server and exposing classified info which would have caused all of us with clearances to be under the jail without even the fbi investigating. And fbi director comey received 6 million dollars from the Clinton foundation. WTF? Vote wisely or u are as corrupt as they are. And don't say just show me something convincing that Hillary is dishonest. Anyone who doesn't already know she and bill both are criminals are living in a dream world and avoiding reality.
I will always believe Petraeus was 'set up' to remove him from presidential running and silence his knowledge of Benghazi.
I will even go a step further and opine that the documents found at Petraeus' residence (the one's he loaned to Broadwell) may have been emails from Clinton that he kept as insurance. As you recall, Law Enforcement discovery of the documents only happened after Petraeus retrieved the them from Broadwell. Was the content of the Petraeus docments ever revealed, even discussed ?
Anything ever happen to Broadwell? I don't believe so. Perhaps she took one of Comey's immunity deals.
[Wash Times] Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence on Thursday said "even the truth happens" sometimes with Bill and Hillary Clinton, in the wake of former President Clinton's calling the health care system under Obamacare the "craziest thing in the world" earlier this week.
"Well, sometimes with the Clintons, even the truth happens," Mr. Pence said on "Fox and Friends" when asked for his reaction to the former president's comments.
"Bill Clinton said what millions of Americans have known for years, and that is we need to repeal Obamacare lock, stock, and barrel. Donald Trump and I are committed to doing that," he said.
"For Bill Clinton to point out that this is a crazy plan that has resulted in premiums skyrocketing around the country and people literally not being able to keep the insurance they like, not being able to keep the doctor they like -- I think it represents an extraordinary moment of candor, but it's a great contribution to Donald Trump's message that we've got to repeal Obamacare, and we'll do that once he arrives in the Oval Office," Mr. Pence said.
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Obamacare was always intended as a "favor" to the insurance companies to let them make tons of money, in the way the Consumer Credit Protection Act was actually a gift to the banks and credit card companies.
In both cases, after all of the $1.5 BILLION In an annual PR expenses, we see the rates for both credit cards, banking fees and health insurance go right through the roof and into the stratosphere.
No accident and as intended. I am not sure the end game is a single payer system. As long as the AMA and the ABA lead the lists of democrat donors, we will not have a single payer system. The doctors can't get rich giving lousy care and killing thousands with neglect and the lawyers can't get rich without suing them. A symbiotic relationship that feeds the democratic fascism that grips our country.
BLUF from Klein's book 'Guilty as Sin.'
[Breitbart] He explained how Obama has taken steps to guarantee his influence within a Clinton White House:
It's either Hillary wins or Donald Trump wins, and if Donald Trump wins, obviously, Obama's legacy is gonna get wiped out, including Obamacare and a lot of other things. So he's thrown in his lot now with Hillary, but he's aware of the fact - keenly aware of the fact - that Hillary's health is very frail.
He, in fact, offered her the use of the Walter Reed National Medical Center to have a checkup. He said he'd let her get in there secretly and nobody would know about it, but she said, "No, thank you" because she has her own doctors in New York City, where she goes periodically for checkups, for what I'm told is a leaky heart valve.
He, Obama, was very instrumental in persuading Hillary to tap Tim Kaine as her running mate. And the reason for that is that Tim Kaine, who used to be a Clinton loyalist many years ago when he was governor of Virginia, backed Obama in 2008 against Hillary during the primaries.
So he is an Obama man, Tim Kaine, not a Clinton man. And so if Hillary should falter because of her health in the White House, if she's elected, the Obamas have what you might call a mole, or a Manchurian candidate, or whatever you want to call Tim Kaine, there so that they can have huge influence over the course of this country and the Democratic Party.
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As Marlow put it, Guilty as Sin suggests Clinton’s shaky health was one of the reasons the Obamas supported her because “they think they could perhaps have another shadow presidency.” Emphasis added.
A 'shadow presidency' continued, with no interruption of a 'peanut eating - tobacco chewing' do nothing congress.
Yes, I stole the peanut and tobacco quote from a famous general.
There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its bricks and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one story hilltop affairs or a five floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.
Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don't impress anyone in Europe or in Washington D.C. Who can even think about genocide in Africa in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment.
Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can't expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.
Continued on Page 49
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'Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can't expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews.'
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NYP] Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureaus reputation for uncompromising investigations with his "cowardly" whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private e-mail server.
