As much as I would like this to be true, I think that's a pretty biased interpretation of his letter.
My reading would be this: "We found some new emails. They're relevant, but we don't know if they're important. We're looking into it."
What I find interesting is the timing of this letter and, possibly, the fact that he wrote it at all. But we can't judge the significance of those without knowing if this is standard procedure. For all we know, he may regularly send letters that say things like "I spelled a word wrong on page 875 of our report. Agents are looking into correcting it and resubmitting the report."
Or this type of letter could be highly unusual, especially days before a presidential election.
Either way, he had to know Chaffetz would be shouting this from the top of a mountain...
So on the timing....there's an interesting backstory here. James Comey was a lifelong Republican until this year [1]. He appears to be a Republican in the "never Trump" camp. Prior to the public disclosure of Comey's recommendation that Clinton not be prosecuted, Loretta Lynch publicly stated that she would try to appear impartial by going with whatever the FBI recommended. This effectively put Comey - a "never Trump" man - in the position of appointing the next President of the United States. If he had elected to recommend prosecution, Trump was the guaranteed winner. If he didn't, most realized that Clinton would beat Trump.
Perhaps this "reopening" is more the result of an attack of conscience than of the significance of any new information. It's possible that this is a halfhearted attempt to do what many legal experts considered to be the right thing in the first place.
You mean the legal experts... at the DOJ? Who apparently said "the move would be inconsistent with rules designed to avoid the appearance of interference in an election"?
The relevant laws are clear as to what happens. It is the CIO responsible for the individual department who is required to regulate the use of IT resources. It would have been their responsibility to tell Clinton specifically that she wasn't allowed to use the server then cite her if she continued. That didn't happen so she's completely in the clear. The law even allows the CIO leeway to allow things contrary to policy under certain conditions (though I don't think that was done in this case).
The law doesn't provide for felony prosecution for using personal IT resources, no matter how much some people want that to be true for politically convenient reasons. The same people crying about Clinton would reject the charges out of hand if it were their favored political candidate.
In the end she didn't do anything morally wrong which is why this whole email thing has been one big nothing-burger. Everyone has had to fight corporate IT's outdated and stupid policies at one time or another and almost all of us have subverted those policies to get our jobs done.
The only reason we even know about this is because she disclosed it. Colin Powell and Condoleza Rice both used private email servers. So did the entire Bush administration. When confronted with requests for the data they just nuked it from orbit and no one gave a shit. Suddenly it's a huge scandal! The crime of the century!
Trump has violated tax law by using is "charitable" foundation as a piggy bank. I'm not calling for an investigation and prosecution of him because that's banana republic territory.
Ok, so I'll put aside for a moment the fact that she lied directly to the FBI when the former Secretary of State told them that she didn't know that "C" meant classified, along with the myriad criminal pay-to-play issues that the FBI has simply ignored, both of which are slam-dunk federal felony cases. The law provides for criminal charges when someone uses gross negligence in the mishandling of classified materials - no intent required. According to Comey himself, her conduct actually met the legal definition of gross negligence. He just didn't want to use the gross negligence statute instead of the statute that requires intent because it would have handed Trump the presidency.
(C), as a portion marker in a classified document (which it would properly only occur in if the document itself was at least as highly classified, with banners marking the classification in full words) means "confidential", not "classified". In email, the banner text is placed at the top and bottom of the body (the subject line of a classified email is portion marked to indicate the classification status -- including (U) for unclassified if that applies -- of the subject line itself.) [0] Any place that portion markers are properly used, the whole containing document is clearly marked as classified with a specific level, and the whole content -- other than parts portion-marked as unclassified -- is classified.
It's kind of funny how the majority of the people who mock Clinton over this get it wrong themselves.
And also omit the context, which was a (C) used in an email which had neither a portion marker in the header (as all classified emails should) nor classification banners. In that context, I think mlet's actually pretty reasonable to have no idea that a parenthetical (C) on a paragraph was intended as a portion marker of classification level.
I apparently used the wrong word in my comment (Clasified vs Confidential), but regardless, she claimed that she didn't know what it meant. I'm not the former Secretary of State, so my gaff is understandable. Hillary Clinton, however, is the former Secretary of State, and undoubtedly received extensive training in these matters. That means she either lied or has some kind of mental defect that made her unable to remember some of the most critical training that she received during her tenure. Either of those are disqualifiers for the Presidency in my opinion.
No, she said she didn't know what it was intended to mean in the email in question, which had neither classification banners nor a portion marker on the subject line.
It's perfectly reasonable to not know that a lone parenthetical letter at the start of a paragraph in an email that is not itself marked as classified is intended as a classification portion marker. Because parenthetical letters have many uses in general written communication, and there special use as portion markers is specific to documents that are classified as a whole, which there are standard ways of marking.
Once again, we are talking about the former Secretary of State and government emails. In that context, it is not reasonable for her to claim that she wouldn't have applied her intimate knowledge of the indicators of classified/confidential materials to the email in question. We won't agree on this, at least until after the election when perhaps many Clinton supporters like yourself will be free to acknowledge simple, unassailable facts about your candidate.
Most government emails are not classified. Outside of a classified context, parenthetical letters have the full take off uses they have in general English communication, especially the use that Clinton suggested was the only one that came to mind in the context of the email in question.
Without any of the indications that should have been present indicating that the email itself was classified, there's little radon to think a stay parenthetical (C) is intended as a portion marker.
Clinton didn't say she didn't know what (C) meant as a portion marker (which would be worthy of mockery) , she said she didn't know that the (C) in an email lacking any indication that it was a classified document was intended to have the special meaning that (C) has within a classified document.
I would guess that a significant percentage of State Department emails to and from the Secretary of State are at least confidential. Again, we won't agree on this until after the election when Clinton supporters like yourself are able to undertake an honest assessment of their new President without Trump in the picture. She lied, she will very likely continue lying, and given the history of the Clinton family, the odds are overwhelmingly high that this will be far from the most significant scandal overshadowing her candidacy/Presidency.
> I would guess that a significant percentage of State Department emails to and from the Secretary of State are at least confidential
Probably, so? The fact that it's a mixed environment means that it's a code switching situation, which means that the indicators that a particular context is in play are critical. There's a reason that classified documents have banners (and though it's not the purpose of portion marking email subject lines to serve as a "this document is classified" flag, it probably in practice schedule at least as useful as a code switching trigger as proper banners.
> Again, we won't agree on this until after the election when Clinton supporters like yourself are able to undertake an honest assessment of their new President
We won't agree on this question even then. I mean, my position on the emails in general or this particular point hasn't changed since I was a vociferous opponent of Clinton in the primary, I don't see why it would even if I became entirely disenchanted with her performance in office.
I suspect you're projecting from the fact that your reaction is based on your prefered electoral outcome to assume the same must be true of anyone who disagrees with you as well.
Her staff discuss worries over highly classified pictures of North Korea in the Podesta emails related to this scandal, so no matter what markings were used, she showed very poor judgement.
There's also a point there that intentional negligence is a contradiction in terms. If something is intentional, it's not negligent. If it's negligent, it can't be intentional.
> What I find interesting is the timing of this letter and, possibly, the fact that he wrote it at all. But we can't judge the significance of those without knowing if this is standard procedure. For all we know, he may regularly send letters that say things like "I spelled a word wrong on page 875 of our report. Agents are looking into correcting it and resubmitting the report."
> Or this type of letter could be highly unusual, especially days before a presidential election.
I can't imagine Comey sending that letter out this close to the election without having something actionable. He knows full well the impact that even the allegation that something is there would have.
> I can't imagine Comey sending that letter out this close to the election without having something actionable. He knows full well the impact that even the allegation that something is there would have.
He apparently was legally required to because he previously testified that everything had been looked out. There is now more to look at. This was a savvy move by Rep Chaffetz, not a strategy by Comey (Chaffetz is also who characterized it as being re-opened, Comey said no such thing).
> (Chaffetz is also who characterized it as being re-opened, Comey said no such thing).
I think there's a technical correctness to that. The FBI won't look into anything if there isn't an open investigation. So it'd have to be re-opened for them to look into it.
> Technically it had never been closed in the first place, so if you want to be technical Chaffetz is still full of shit.
I'll give you the point on being technically correct (and Chaffetz being full of...) but counter that by that logic she's been under FBI investigation this whole time.
> ...but counter that by that logic she's been under FBI investigation this whole time.
Interesting. Has there ever been a Fortune 500 board of directors in a CEO selection process under way with a CEO candidate personally under FBI investigation say, "oh, that's okay, you're still one of our two top choices"? If not, it is a peculiar juxtaposition.
While an investigation most assuredly does not pass the "guilty until proven innocent" bar, CEO's have been summarily fired by boards or left for the good of the company simply for being personally under FBI investigation. For the political geeks/wonks among us, can you please explain to this layperson how Clinton's situation differs?
> Interesting. Has there ever been a Fortune 500 board of directors in a CEO selection process under way with a CEO candidate personally under FBI investigation say, "oh, that's okay, you're still one of our two top choices"? If not, it is a peculiar juxtaposition.
There aren't any parallels in the corporate world I can point to. Being under federal investigation would be like wearing skunk cologne to any sane corporate board.
> While an investigation most assuredly does not pass the "guilty until proven innocent" bar, CEO's have been summarily fired by boards or left for the good of the company simply for being personally under FBI investigation. For the political geeks/wonks among us, can you please explain to this layperson how Clinton's situation differs?
Short answer is that she's a Clinton and in control (whether direct or indirect) of the entire DNC and it's delegates. The Clinton's are a big part of the DNC money machine, raising money across the organization so everybody owes them favors. They'd ignore anything like this out of fear of spiting her or WJC unless it were criminal not to do so (say if she were convicted).
There is not a good comparison because if it were anyone else no one would ever have known about the investigation. The FBI does not normally comment on ongoing investigations and since no charges were ever brought there would not have been any disclosure of the matter.
My armchair prediction is that this is a pro-Clinton move. It will be used as an event that can absorb a lot of the confusing and harmful information spreading from the leaks.
It will then be clearly refuted in a tidy 6 o'clock news bite next week. The goal will be to give average voters a sense of closure that will also encompass the negative buzz around the wikileaked emails.
Eh, I dunno. A ton of things have turned up in the Podesta emails (as well as the FBI docs) that are seriously damaging. And then it turned out there are DKIM signatures, which are valid, which rebut the claims of 'tampering' some had floated.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/33821
"But if the objective is to connect emails-Benghazi and conflate the two in voters’ minds (which consultants feel is an imperative here), I’m not sure we know whether we can credibly do that"
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/9545
Think we should hold emails to and from potus? That's the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I seems like they will.
The letter states "referred to the fact that the FBI had completed it's investigation". Then the letter states "I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow.... whether they contain classified information".
In plain English, the case was closed, but now there is new evidence and we're investigating it. Sounds like 're-opening' to me.
They are in fact re-opening so they can ammend the findings. If it is determined that new emails warrant charges, she may be charged.
The real news story here is that this is what everyone will be talking about for the next weekend, that's three days, with a response by her on Monday. So, maybe four days. That's more than 30% of the remaining election cycle.
I was under the impression that there's some operational distinction between looking at and evaluating some information, and declaring a formal, targeted investigation as "open". But its probably too fine a distinction for the general public to be bothered about. It's a bad look vs a worse look.
Perhaps, I think the key takeaway for Americans is the "Not Guilty" that Americans seemed to believe was the case in regards to these emails (It was really "Nobody would prosecute") may not be so.
Perhaps it would have been better to admit fault and deal with this outright in the beginning, rather than attempting to manipulate the process[0].
You're dramatically downplaying the things HRC has been implicated in. It's almost as if you've already made up your mind that she's not guilty of anything.
She ran a private e-mail server for top-secret communication while in office. DNC rigged the primary in her favour, and you’re suggesting she had nothing to do with that. Who’s being absurd here.
That was a very strange article with all the near-wishful "igniting speculation about a Clinton defeat" stuff. The whole emails issue has been inside baseball, politics-wise. Insiders and pundits love yelling about it but average voters either don't care (the vast majority) or have already assumed she's guilty/not guilty and priced that into their vote. Reopening the investigation is not going to change the election outcome.
I haven't seen any numbers that indicate the nation cares either way on this. Here's some analysis of Hilary getting slight gains after the announcement that FBI wouldn't prosecute.[1] Is your comment based on polling or just gut feeling?
This generally seems like a poor signal. People are very bad at reporting what affects their voting decision and a little better at reporting how they will vote. I would be much more apt to believe this was an important factor if we see a shift in the tracking polls or a significant shift in another.
You're right. People do have feelings about this. I didn't mean to discuss feelings. I meant to use the word care to mean more specifically that this is not a deciding factor in a significant number of votes. Which is the only context that matters to me.
It seems few people are actually voting for Clinton, but rather voting against Trump. What is something like this leaves such a bad taste in their mouth that they decide to not vote at all?
This is definitely the risk. Especially with so many Dems saying "no one cares."
People do care; the way for leftists (like myself) to show that they care is by simply abstaining or going third party which would obviously cripple her.
A single phone poll of "a random national sample of 874 likely voters" (1 in every 350 thousand) does not a fact make in a nation of 300 million people. Sample size is just too small. Such a study would have to be repeated with a larger sample.
you understand what that email was talking about right?
oversampling is done to get a better view of specific groups. when put back in comparison to the population as a whole they are readjusted for their extra sampling.
those polls were also for internal purposes to the clinton campaign, and not polls that are actually released. so why would there be manipulation in an internal poll that would affect decision making in the clinton camp?
there is literally zero going on in that email but trump supporters saw "oversampled" and freaked out because they didn't know what it meant in regards to polling.
I'm inclined to agree that it's not going to make much difference; how people vote is more determined by their social group loyalties, especially when things are as fraught as they are already.
One is under criminal investigation by the FBI for actions that are blatantly illegal and we have concrete evidence of occurring. She got off the first time without charges due to a bullshit reason from the FBI ("no reasonable prosecutor would take this up").
One has received a civil lawsuit which means absolutely nothing and is based entirely on he-said-she-said allegations. There is no investigation. I could go file a lawsuit today against you for sexual harassment. It means literally nothing other than I paid an attorney money to go file a piece of paper.
I've heard many people cite emails as the main reason they are not voting for her. I assume most of them actually would never have voted for her anyway, but it's a real issue.
I've always voted democrat as "the lesser of two evils" but this email situation has really ruffled my feathers (and is why I am voting third party). I get that there is favoritism in everything, but the idea that Hillary (at least before looked like she) walked away scott-free after committing what I believe to be a very serious crime whereas any one of us in a similar situation would have been thrown in jail right away and smeared as a terrorist didn't sit well with me for obvious reasons.
While I get this sentiment, I would honestly like to know if you feel she has been judged fairly and consistently compared to other email related scandals out there. Most notably the bush white house emails [1] and Colin Powell's use of a personal email account (if not a personal server, though in some ways using an AOL email server has other complications over a private server)[2]
I'm not saying the email scandal is a non-issue, but I find it very interesting that so much emphasis is placed on what she has done despite plenty of other questionable incidents previously. It follows well the narrative that she is being at the very least held to a different standard than other politicians.
You left out Petraeus who did worse and still only received probation.
The reality is that most cases of mishandling classified information result in little more than a stern talking to from your manager, re-training, and a blemish in your file.
Other politicians wished they were held to the same standard as the Clintons.
The Bush admin had plenty of other controversies and they were reamed by the media repeatedly for those (and justifiably so). It's not like it was hands off.
Maybe this is a bigger issue because of the continued lying about what happened, which is an ongoing issue for Clinton.
I admit her handling of the issue has not been great, but that is a trend with most of her "scandals". How she handles them is often worse than the scandal itself (in that there tends to be smoke but no fire).
This to me supports the idea she wasn't trying to hide her state dept emails where they couldn't be accessed via FOI requests. If that were the goal, they would have done what the bush administration did and use that server almost exclusively so that both sender and receiver were on a private server. As it was, emails to and from other state dept staffers using their state dept emails would have copies. If that was an attempt to hide official emails it was not a good one.
Those were bad, but there are differences that matter:
The law has changed. Requirements were less strict back when email was new and exotic. We don't punish people for violating laws passed after the not-yet-crime is done; this would violate the constitution.
Bush and Powell were not under investigation, and thus didn't destroy evidence while under investigation.
Bush and Powell didn't have the issues with classified material, possibly excepting one disputed Powell email.
I don't think most people would be jailed for it. There's no evidence of it being malicious so as my dad (who was in the military) put it, "if the government jailed people for doing things that were stupid there would be no one left".
You have _a lot_ more faith in the sanity of the Government than I do. Hell, I mean, the FBI statement itself said,
"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case"
If a normal citizen were to have done the same -- a citizen which didn't have the same profile, stature, or benefits of connection as Hilary, the "reasonable-ness" from the prosecution's vantage point would likely sky rocket.
> If a normal citizen were to have done the same -- a citizen which didn't have the same profile, stature, or benefits of connection as Hilary, the "reasonable-ness" from the prosecution's vantage point would likely sky rocket.
Then again, a normal citizen doesn't really have a lot of people sending them classified emails. I don't think this is a situation where you can extrapolate from VIP to non-VIP…
I don't like the double standard that would cause a lower-level employee prosecuted or worse, but if this is an issue I would like to see a more consistent standard applied across government.
Also, how many CEO's do you know that do stupid stuff with customer data and break rules in an organization? I'm not saying is right or that it shouldn't be punished but the double standard to me is the problem. If it wasn't Hillary nobody would care but there has been a marketing campaign against her for so long its practically Pavlovian at this point.
I disagree completely with this. I _want_ to believe I live in a country where not only laws are applied but common sense too.
Do I believe Hillary acted with malicious intent? I don't. I do believe she broke the law.
The reality I believe in is that if it were me somehow in this situation, there would be no common-sense applied, just the letter of the law. No judge would look at my past and see someone making a mistake, or try to get to know me to better understand me. Just gitmo.
+1 I am also a lifetime Democrat who is not voting for Clinton for this and other reasons. I decided to vote for Jill Stein, rather than not vote at all.
The majority of them have no idea what they're talking about if you ask them "what about the emails?" and are just parroting a talking point. Even if she was fully cleared and they were made aware of the fact that Republicans have done the same thing, it would not change their minds.
Exactly - I had an argument with one who kept parroting that she had 3 servers but only said 1 when asked by the FBI, when I asked if they knew what an email server was they had no clue
Those statements are always hard to trust, however, since you don't know how many of them are people who may not feeling comfortable stating their true beliefs in that forum or don't really care but are trying to encourage people they believe would vote for the other side not to vote at all.
I would bet that we're seeing a lot of that this year because there are many Republicans who don't like a Democrat winning but also aren't keen to have their personal reputation tarred by support for their party's candidate. If, say, you feel there is an immigration problem it's much easier to say something about email servers rather than trying to defend Trump's positions on the issue or defend yourself against charges of racism.
Or he is just doing his job and not worrying about who is going to be president? I don't know that much about him but I would like to think its possible for some people to be non partisan.
The e-mails should have put her in prison, and they would have put anyone else in the same situation in prison. But you're right, with her being her, they're a complete nonissue. They simply don't matter at all.
To be absolutely objective about it, there really are people in prison for doing with confidential state secrets what Secretary Clinton did with confidential state secrets.
There's a few likely differences, although it's hard to tell
from the limited info in the Clinton case:
1) Saucier generated the classified information. He took the photos. I don't think there was evidence the Clinton was knowingly sending classified information to non-cleared individuals
2) Saucier himself deleted the files from his laptop after learning he was under investigation. The FBI in Clinton's case determined that there was no willful attempt to obstruct justice
3) The quantity and quality of the information likely differs. If the Clinton emails contained photographs of classified military hardware, we'd probably see more motion.
See Comey's quote comparing the Petraeus case to the Clinton case:
"So you have obstruction of justice, you have intentional misconduct and a vast quantity of information," Comey said. "He admitted he knew that was the wrong thing to do. That is a perfect illustration of the kind of cases that get prosecuted."
The FBI explicitly investigated whether there was an attempt to hide emails. Here is Comey's statment:
> The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.
> It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.
> We have conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand how that sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.
The biggest difference between the cases is that we know exactly what info this sailor had, how he got it, and why it was sensitive.
We don't know that about Clinton, and the reason that matters is because information does not get declassified just because it is publicly known. The full text of a newspaper article about a Snowden disclosure contains information that to this day is classified top secret or higher. Someone sending her an email about a NYTimes story could result in classified info in her email.
Another difference is that Clinton was legally empowered to determine which emails were work-related (and therefore must be archived) and which were personal (and therefore could legally be deleted). The fact that she and her team made mistakes in this process is not criminal; mistakes are not a crime. In addition the FBI recovered and reviewed many of these deleted emails and still recommended against prosecution.
The extent to which one can point to a classified disclosure prosecution and say "this is just like Clinton!" is exaggerated. The details matter.
A similar situation happened under the Bush administration and no one was jailed for it. Of course they were smart enough to use private email servers for both senders and receivers, and they deleted an estimated 22 million the emails.
It was also much more widespread, with 88 staffers having accounts on this server. Of course, there's no evidence that classified information was discussed, since they deleted the evidence. But it's hard to believe Karl Rove sent 150k emails without a single bit of classified information in them.
So there's precedent for think kind of thing being swept under the rug.
To say the obvious: There is great risk of the FBI and/or Comey trying to influence the outcome of the election. Earlier, when Comey said Clinton had been "extremely careless", it seemed to overstep his bounds: He played judge and jury, and convicted her without trial.
To do this two weeks before the election raises very serious questions about the U.S.'s most fundamental institutions, rule of law, and democracy. Every Democratic leader is subject to endless investigation and deligitimization.
EDIT: This is not a partisan concern. Everyone needs these institutions, democracy and the rule of law.
> EDIT: This is not a partisan concern. Everyone needs these institutions, democracy and the rule of law.
It's not a partisan concern and we should be concerned about the rule of law...except in this situation? Because that's what it sounds like you are saying.
A society that lets its leaders do whatever they want without repercussions but "lesser" people get punished is not one particularly concerned about the rule of law. Why would we not want the FBI doing its job?
I agree that Hillary Clinton should be subject to the law just like everyone else; that's not my point.
The FBI has the power to influence elections if it chooses to. Re-opening the investigation 11 days before election day fits the profile of trying to influence the election; it's an "October Surprise". But 'fitting the profile' is not conclusive and it's also very possible that re-opening it now was apolitical. We don't know enough right now to prove it either way.
My point is that we should seriously consider the possibility. Nobody wants the FBI trying to influence elections. Recall that another institution, the Supreme Court, decided a recent Presidential election on a party-line vote. A core value of the U.S. is that voters decide, whether or not I happen to agree with their decision. I'm afraid that could slip away if we turn a blind eye.
He said he doesn't recommend prosecution because he didn't believe there was a reasonable prosecutor that would do it. It's a huge load of horse shit. Hillary got off because she's well connected, not because there wasn't a case.
"In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails" - Sounds very happenstance. What are the odds something coincidental happened two weeks before the election?
Given the sheer number of cases and the government's prior willingness to name and shame Wikileaks, I'd expect that probability to be low without further evidence (high uncertainty remains).
Assange has been releasing thousands of Podesta's emails in dribs and drabs every day. The Justice Department just released a lot of new information as well.
Unless an indictment comes down before Election Day, I think it's probably too late for this to have any material impact. Most likely Clinton voters aren't actually Clinton voters - they are anti-Trump voters. An indictment prior to the election would change things, but that will not happen. Clinton has almost no chance of losing.
Once she wins, she will then either short circuit the investigation by forcing Comey and anyone else associated with it to resign, or she will actually be indicted and then she will pardon herself. For the record I believe that both of the candidates are despicable human beings and either one will make the worst President I have ever had in my lifetime, but we are almost certainly stuck with Clinton for at least the next four years.
Not quite. There is precedent for the new president pardoning the outgoing president, though - Ford pardoned Nixon for anything and everything Nixon had done that was illegal during his term in office. That closed the book on Watergate, but it arguably cost Ford the election to Carter.
Yeah, I don't think that will happen. First, the previous report found no wrongdoing. Second, I'm sure Hillary will say that she did not break the law (which is so far supported by the FBI investiagtion unless these new emails change things). And third, Clinton's accuser's don't always care about how accurate their accusations are and Obama's pardon will just give them evidence that they were right. I don't see a pardon needed or useful.
Ok, so Hillary Clinton was and continues to be a corrupt, deceitful, and self-interested operator. She's doubtlessly done all kinds of both borderline and outright illegal things throughout her career. No big surprise here. If elected, she will continue to work the highly imperfect system we've got in lots of shady and questionable ways.
But please, let's get real. For all her numerous faults, her opponent represents the very real specter of the end of democracy and the closing of our free society.
Honestly, I hate to say this, but we are past the point of laws here and the fairy tale than ANY sufficiently powerful person will be held accountable for their misdeeds. I've never been one to buy the two-party lesser of evils narrative, but we are really and truly at the edge of the cliff right now. Do we let righteous indignation push us over the edge? Or do we live to fight another day?
>her opponent represents the very real specter of the end of democracy and the closing of our free society
Let me get this straight. Hillary intentionally subverted the democratic process by having the DNC work against Sanders. We have concrete evidence of her working with one of her PACs, which again is highly illegal and subverting our democratic process. She has shady and inappropriate meetings with people responsible for running the voting process. She's sponsored by people who own the voting machines. And not to mention that she has inarguably done highly illegal things with her private email server and got off without charges, showing the injustice of our two-tier criminal justice system.
"That troubled me deeply. I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake. And...if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win."
He has stated that if elected, he'll spend the first 100 days suing his accusers.
He believes the press has too much freedom of speech.
He has claimed the election is rigged against him, and has all but told his supporters to engage in vote suppression.
He has said he will attempt to force all Muslims to register into a database.
He has said he will ban all Muslims from entering the nation.
Would you like me to go? If you listen to his words at campaign rallies, they bear a striking resemblance to fascist dictators on the rise.
Clinton may fit the mold of the "crooked Washington politician", but at the least, she has a basic respect for democracy. Trump, on the other hand, would attempt to utterly plow his way through our legal system for his own gain.
The reason he said it was 'rigged' is because of the overwhelming bias and frankly twilight-zone behavior of the media who are clearly donating to Clinton and wanting to maintain whatever special privileges they have under Obama.
Yes, I've seen that interview, where Gingrinch accused Kelley of being fascinated with sex and then attempted to use Bill Clinton's indiscretions as some sort of way to discredit Hillary. This is after he talked to his exwife about divorce while she was recovering from cancer and then later has an affair. At that point, it was clear the interview served no useful purpose.
Additionally, all major media publications have come out in support of Trump for the simple fact he has, in no way shape or form, demonstrated any leadership capabilities. He tweeted at 3 am for days following the first campaign about the Miss USA issue. How does demonstrate a steady hand and patience?
He tweeted at three a.m. that people should look for a non-existent sex tape because he got his feelings hurt that a model he called fat was publicly supporting Hillary.
I for one hope our president isn't concerned about how much models weigh. And if they are, I hope they don't respond to criticism by slut-shaming that person, especially for something they didn't do. So, no suggesting at 3 am that people investigate the sex life of someone who attacked him isn't very presidential.
I'm more concerned about our President's view about foreign wars that kill tens to hundreds of thousands of civilians, but I guess if you want to focus on their tweets then go ahead.
I haven't gotten to a point where I can compare Clinton and Trump on policy. First I don't think Trump really has consistent or in depth policy on anything. Second, I just don't think Trump has the temperament or stability to be President. I don't know why Trump would be better on foreign wars. But I think foreign policy under a Trump presidency would be based entirely on Trump's personal opinion.
Sure, tweets are inconsequential, and I think politics would be more productive if disagreements focused on policy differences. But his words and actions show that he's a really petty and shallow person. And he would be a petty and shallow President. I don't think he really has many specific well thought out plans he could actually implement.
This is all disingenuous hyperbole. There are plenty of terrible things to pin on Trump without inflating bullshit memes. There is a nugget of truth to some of what you say, but it is not said or meant in the way you state it, and there's no nuggets of truth in anything I have seen that has anything to do with subverting the voting system.
He was obviously not serious in a literal sense of his words. He was making a point. It'd be like being a football coach shit talking before a game - "the other team should give up, they don't stand a chance". He doesn't literally mean they should give up.
This is so blindly obvious to me and anyone else who's capable of a rational thought. I cannot believe you are seriously try to suggest he meant that in the sense that he wants to subvert the election process.
Wait, should I bring the point at which he said, during a national TV debate, that he would keep us in suspense about his decision to accept the outcome of the election? Then later state he would only accept it if he won? Maybe we should discuss the form on his website that says, “stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election.”?
How about his claims of voter fraud despite the fact that no evidence has been found?
>This is so blindly obvious to me and anyone else who's capable of a rational thought.
Ad hominen attack, but I suspect you support Trump.
For the record, I don't support Trump. I think it's highly likely he has sexually assaulted women in the past, I think he's tremendously unqualified to be president, his plan to lower corporate income tax is complete bullshit, and even if he hasn't explicitly said anything racist (I'm not informed enough to say either way) I think it's awful that he's cultivating racists around him unapologetically.
Despite all this, I am fucking sick and tired at the outright lies, slander, and disingenuous arguments against Trump. There is plenty to attack him on without all the bullshit. And I'm sick of the Hillary reality distortion that is, from what I can tell, the absolute epitome of everything wrong with politics today.
> Despite all this, I am fucking sick and tired at the outright lies, slander, and disingenuous arguments against Trump. There is plenty to attack him on without all the bullshit. And I'm sick of the Hillary reality distortion that is, from what I can tell, the absolute epitome of everything wrong with politics today.
What is so confusing here? Trump has stated repeatedly that if he loses the election was rigged. He was not joking, he was dead serious. He repeated the claim multiple times. He even refused the settle the issue during the third debate.
That statement alone is a disqualifying event for any politician.
Looking at your other posts I don't believe you about voting third party, you're an obvious Trump supporter. Why lie about it?
I would love to see sources of him saying the elections are rigged if he doesn't win, regardless of circumstances, and it being clear he meant it literally.
There's no easy way to for me to 100% prove that's my image or that I immediately hit the "cast ballot" button after taking it, but I promise you won't find that image anywhere else on the internet. And if it helps further drive the point home, there is at most one Republican on that entire ballot.
He won't be suing anyone from the Oval Office. His lawyers will be suing people after the election for making up false accusations, which is still this year, still during the Obama administration...
Does anyone REALLY think that someone who was sexually assaulted by a BILLIONAIRE wouldn't have cashed in already?
>Does anyone REALLY think that someone who was sexually assaulted by a BILLIONAIRE wouldn't have cashed in already?
No actually, they all decided together an hour before the the email leaks were about to be released to the public about things that happened decades ago and to release a tape of him. That clearly has no political motivation what-so-ever and how dare you question it.
> She has Obama, using tax payer money, campaigning for her - while not illegal, is pretty morally bankrupt in my opinion.
Just a point, this is normal with the sitting President campaigning either for themselves for their second term or their parties nominee. Both Trump and Hilary have plenty of valid points against them, so there is no need to muddy the water with points that don't really matter.
Oh, stop. I don't like Hillary, but Trump says he'll contest a loss. That's what actual subversion of the process looks like. Everything you're bringing up is politics.
> Hillary intentionally subverted the democratic process by having the DNC work against Sanders.
Getting elected is a process of building key supporters, including within your own party.
> We have concrete evidence of her working with one of her PACs
All candidates do, and use some level of indirection to stay within the regulation. The regulation is toothless for campaign finance reform, so why get worked up about it.
> She has Obama, using tax payer money, campaigning for her
Outgoing presidents always campaign on behalf of their party's nominee.
Gore contested his loss. Was that actual subversion of the process?
If the election is close, I think the loser has a duty to contest the loss. Trump contesting the election would be every bit as right as Gore contesting the election.
What is so bad about this? The reaction people are having is strange. It's as if people are purposely misinterpreting Trump's words as implying that he will march on Washington D.C. with a militia. The realistic assumption is a Gore-style lawsuit, and there is nothing wrong with that.
I agree with you, to a point. Gore's case was uniquely bad, and I'm not convinced it wasn't fraud, personally. But he made the challenge after there was evidence of fraud; he didn't lead up to the election hinting that any potential loss is due to a rigged vote.
There's no comparing Trump to Gore. Gore did not so brazenly claim the election was rigged prior to voting, and he did concede after the recount. Also he never claimed universal fraud, just issues with the Florida result alone. In the end, he lost by only 537 votes in Florida.
He didn't say he would contest a loss, he said he wouldn't make a decision until the election actually took place. How anyone expects someone to predict the future is beyond me and the logic of the question shows that it was totally a trap so they could write sensational news headlines.
Please! Your interpretation of "I'll keep you in suspense" only makes sense if you strip the context. The question of concession was only asked because, he's been claiming the election is rigged. So that question of concession, translated to include the context, was,
"Ok Donald, are you really going to claim to the nation that the elections are rigged, and that you won't accept their results?"
And his, answer was, "We'll see." Which means, yes! He's standing by the claim. So don't equivocate Trump's position. It's not media sensationalism.
Both Clinton and her supporters have been rather obviously laying the groundwork to challenge the results if they lose with claims about Russia hacking election systems and conspiring to support Trump. (I'm still not sure how having a list of voters is meant to help Russia with this if casting fake votes is really that hard, but never mind - this election is post-truth anyway.) The real difference is there's no chance in hell she'd be stupid enough to admit that.
> She has Obama, using tax payer money, campaigning for her - while not illegal, is pretty morally bankrupt in my opinion.
This is not actually true. While he is forced to only use Airforce One when flying he is required by law to reimburse all costs related to campaigning for anyone. Typically though the president never pays for this and, instead, the candidate they are campaigning for foots the bill.
Every single president in the history of our democracy has done this. Every single one of them.
McCain in 2008 and Gore in 2000 both sort of wanted the sitting president to stay out of the campaign. Bush was pretty unpopular and Clinton had a lot hanging over him (Bush left office with an approval rating around 30%, Clinton around 60%).
Reagan campaigned timidly for Bush I.
So in the last 40 years, it hasn't been very common for the sitting president to come out and campaign hard for their parties candidate. Of course they have generally campaigned for themselves, which has a similar issue of dealing with who pays for things.
"Because it was considered improper for a candidate to pursue the presidency actively, neither Tilden nor Hayes actively stumped as part of the campaign, leaving that job to surrogates."
My point is that it is morally void, one candidate is doing it, the other isn't. That it's been done historically has absolutely zero relevance as to whether it is a moral thing to do (see literally any example of civil rights laws progressing over the past 300 years).
> My point is that it is morally void, one candidate is doing it, the other isn't.
Huh? There is only one president...what's the problem with campaigning for someone else that you support? I don't see the moral issue. If you're paying for it and you're obviously not doing it in lieu of your duty what's the issue here?
Ok - I looked this up. DNC paid out some money when Obama used AF1. They only paid at the rate of what a regular charter jet would cost, but that makes sense. I don't have a problem with this and I rescind that particular part of my argument.
>Every single president in the history of our democracy has done this. Every single one of them.
> Hillary intentionally subverted the democratic process by having the DNC work against Sanders.
Sanders was basically an independent running as a Dem. Even though I would have preferred him, it's ridiculous to expect the party not to be preferential towards the inside candidate who has decades of connections. Also primaries are not subject to the same level of protections or expectations of institutional impartiality as general elections, which sucks, but is simply the political reality. Also this is all moot because Hillary won by a significant margin.
> We have concrete evidence of her working with one of her PACs, which again is highly illegal and subverting our democratic process.
Citation?
> She has Obama, using tax payer money, campaigning for her - while not illegal, is pretty morally bankrupt in my opinion.
It's completely normal for the outgoing president to campaign for his party. Only reason Bush didn't do it for McCain was because he was so unpopular at the time.
> She has shady and inappropriate meetings with people responsible for running the voting process. She's sponsored by people who own the voting machines.
Citations?? I haven't heard of any of this. Also - so what? Sounds like a Breitbart or Drudge invention.
> And not to mention that she has inarguably done highly illegal things with her private email server and got off without charges, showing the injustice of our two-tier criminal justice system.
"Inarguably"? If it was truly "inarguable" Comey would have recommended prosecution in the first place.
Trump, otoh, has expressed his desire to suppress the free press, to normalize relations with dictators, to jail his political opponents (not something the president has the authority to do, not that he understands that). He's encouraged violence at rallies and on election day. He's encouraged minority voter suppression and intimidation (which has been part of the republican platform for the past decade, so he's not exceptional in that regard, just in how nakedly he does it). The things HRC has done or been accused of are normal, if disappointing, qualities of a mainstream American politician. The things Trump has done and said he'll do are very clearly in the tradition of fascism.
To jail his political opponents? That sounds like a convenient way of spinning the fact that he wants Hillary Clinton to be properly investigated, the fact that she is a political opponent has nothing to do with her crimes.
Dang... a President who wants to follow the laws and not give special passes to those in power? We can't have that!
The fact that Hillary is able to get away with criminal behavior WHILE IN OFFICE is one thing, but why anyone would want her in office again is beyond me. Why would the democrats even want to risk that?
>"Inarguably"? If it was truly "inarguable" Comey would have recommended prosecution in the first place.
Go look at the reason he gives for not recommending prosecution. It has nothing to do with whether what she did was illegal.
Go Google the rest yourself, it's not hard to find and I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince someone who can't be convinced. My comments are targeted at people reading this who might not be aware of the bullshit going on.
"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here."[1]
Potential violations of statues, without criminal intent ≠ "inarguably highly illegal things".
> Go Google the rest yourself, it's not hard to find and I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince someone who can't be convinced.
Okay! Lets see, sources in the first two pages of google results for "clinton voting machines": zerohedge, usapoliticstoday, thepoliticalinsider, conservativedailypost, breitbart, inforwars, wnd, libertywritersnews, quora (lol), snopes (for obvious reasons), proudcons, theconomiccollapseblog, counterpunch, thecommonsenseshow, thegatewaypundit, ajc. Not that the "MSM" is completely unbiased, but openly partisan publications don't really constitute news sources to my mind. If there were really such blatant attempts at election rigging going on, I have faith that an impartial journalist with integrity would be looking into it and/or an adjacent party would have sufficient incentive to blow the whistle. It would be huge news.
> My comments are targeted at people reading this who might not be aware of the bullshit going on.
Don't think you'll find too many of those on HN, but good luck fighting the good fight.
>Potential violations of statues, without criminal intent ≠ "inarguably highly illegal things".
One does not need to intend to do something for it to be highly illegal. There is an absolute boat load of cases where people did 1/10th of what Hillary did, without any proven intent, and went to prison for it. Thousands of people are prosecuted every day by our criminal justice system without any intent.
And in the same quote: "potential violations". He completely dodged having to explicitly say that it was illegal, which anyone with a security clearance can plainly tell you. The only reason he didn't explicitly say she didn't break the law was because it would be a lie that he even couldn't pull off.
It is so blindingly obvious that this is a load of horse shit. He is being vague, misleading, and deliberately obtuse.
The stuff you're talking about is awful, but it's par for the course in the system we have. It shouldn't need to be said, but it can get a LOT worse.
If you really care about things like democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and freedom of speech, handing the country to an egomaniacal authoritarian just to prove a point is the height of strategic stupidity.
When your argument against Trump is a "FEAR UP" campaign without any substantive support or details, you've lost the argument. Trump supporters are not going to be frightened by your hyperbolic claims, and on the Hillary side you're talking into an echo chamber. It's easy to refute two gross generalizations you made:
Enforcing immigration policy, even pausing immigration in certain cases, is not "closing" open society. It's recognizing that there's a dark side to allowing arbitrary numbers of immigrants and refugees bypassing the normal immigration process, and it's taking a step back and figuring out in advance, rationally, what policy we want to enforce, rather than not enforcing any meaningful policy and getting stuck with the results down the road.
The free speech threat from regulating big (and maybe not-so-big) media is troublesome, I agree. However, it's accepted, even more on the far left than on the far right, that pretty much all media, advertising, and entertainment is propaganda. What happens if we continue to fail to recognize this propaganda as a threat to the kind of democracy we hopefully want—a democracy built on rational inquiry, rather than one built on the crest of emotion, on propaganda-fueled mass hysteria?
Nothing Trump has said or done in any way improves the suitability of Clinton for president. If Trump did get elected, maybe it would shock the nation into actually caring about who they pick as their nominee?
I think people severely overestimate how a Trump presidency would play out in terms of "shocking" the system. And in the meantime, a Trump administration could do plenty of damage that have ripple effects on society for decades to come. (See: Supreme Court nominees)
The flip side of that is that there are pretty close to the same number of people that think a Clinton administration could do plenty of damage that would have ripple effects on society for decades to come.
I'm uneasy about judicial activism, in either direction. I wish that conservatism, of the Chestertonian, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" variety, was a requirement for such an august long-tenured position.
...a Trump administration could do plenty of damage that have ripple effects on society for decades to come. (See: Supreme Court nominees)
Didn't we get a list of these? In order, Trump will nominate his sister, Rudy Giuliani, and Chris Christie. He won't get more than three nominations, and Rudy can't end all civil rights for criminal defendants forever all by himself.
> If Trump did get elected, maybe it would shock the nation into actually caring about who they pick as their nominee?
I've wondered about this but I don't think it would happen. Every single person but 3 that I know who is voting for Hillary or Trump is doing so with the upmost conviction that the candidate completely and entirely represents their values as belonging to the respective parties. It's as if the individual parties have become a religion.
And sure I know a few people who will vote for either party that represents their values and goals the most (I am one of them) but for every 1 person I know like that I know dozens of others who are as tied to their political party as their religion.
Yes this is all anecdotal. I have nothing else to go on. But now that he's the nominee I think more people than we might expect are going to fully support him.
I agree with you, but I think she needs to be indicted if the e-mails prove her to be culpable. Ideally she will win the election, and if the e-mails prove damning she will be indicted and hopefully impeached and forced to resign, leaving Tim Kaine to finish off her term, which IMO would be the best case scenario for the country.
That's pretty presumptive. The last FBI investigation into her emails went a year and found nothing. Given that she's been running for president the last decade or two and republicans will pounce on her over any little misstep, do you really think she'd intentionally do something that could ruin her chances of winning or staying president? Remember that intention is important in law...
These are independent events. Investigating for a year, handing out a bunch of immunity agreements and finding yourself out of people to prosecute says nothing about the new evidence at hand.
If the Senate convicts, the impeached individual is removed from office, they don't need to resign (and I guess won't save face by doing it once they are impeached).
This type of comment tends to get down voted on HN, as is already happening. FWIW I agree with you, but the dispassionate rationalists among us will argue that equally applying the rule of law is more important that preventing a potentially dangerous demagogue from taking power. Of course, theres no way that the a trial could occur, let alone an investigation be completed, before the election at this point, so that argument doesn't really apply IMO. If HRC loses because of this, it will simply have been a trial by public opinion, not the rule of law.
Others could also argue that, despite his statements that have shown utter contempt for and ignorance of American law, history and political norms, he doesn't actually have a track record in one direction or another and is just saying those things to elicit support from his base. We can only hope...
>Honestly, I hate to say this, but we are past the point of laws here
In one breath, you express concern about the end of democracy, and in the next you disregard one of the vanguards of American government as if it's nothing. If we are indeed "past the point of laws here," then democracy has already ended.
A week before the election? No. Taking Clinton down, as much as she may deserve it, means the country takes a huge leap toward fascism. It's simple as that.
I find it interesting that you think prosecuting someone for committing a crime would result in fascism, so your solution is to absolve her of the crimes she committed.
He raped his ex wife then did whatever else and ran a bunch of scams. She gave out what she believed to be classified data in a system she clearly understands. Yet even if neither understands their crimes are crimes they are responsible for them under US law. If you want to fix US law and/or the election system then arrest them both. Then something has to be fixed or the system has to run with no inaugurated president. The system functioning with no president is an even better reform in my book.
I think a bipartisan effort to arrest both of them before the election is the logical way forward. I want a system where criminals are afraid to run for office.
Please a democratically elected presidential candidate from a major party getting elected cannot be a threat against democracy, it IS democracy.
Democracy is not getting the leader you want, it is not getting the best leader and it isn't pretty - it is a way to guarantee legitimacy by getting the leader most people vote for, no more, no less.
I wonder to what percentage US people feel they are threatened by a crazy president. I am under the impression that US has the most impressive checks and balances and nobody is above the laws&constitution (and this act by the FBI seems to prove it).
It would be rather funny if America's justice system is so inefficient that one agency would have all of the evidence necessary for an investigation and another would fail to at least ask for it.
Career government officials are not likely to be activist about investigations. As with Clinton's denials, which are very passive and "I didn't know" or didn't question something, one can cover oneself very well by simply not offering anything or refusing to ask for something. Sins of omission are much harder to prosecute.
Except this is exactly what happened last time. They had concrete evidence, they essentially said what she did was illegal, it would have been a slam-dunk case, but regardless said they didn't recommend prosecuting because they didn't think it was feasible.
> What happens if they find her guilty after she is elected?
If it's before she takes office, Obama could pardon her. Would be a smear on the end of his legacy but might a Nixon/Ford style situation to take the personal hit and move the country forward.
If it's after she takes office, most likely impeachment or resignation. It'd be very difficult govern as the chief executive if the country and world sees you as a convicted criminal. Depending on how that plays out, Kaine would most likely take over.
Obama pardoning Hillary would be very different than Ford's pardon of Nixon. The latter allowed a disgraced politician who had resigned to leave Washington without facing criminal prosecution. The former would allow a politician to avoid prosecution and continue to take the office of President.
> Obama pardoning Hillary would be very different than Ford's pardon of Nixon. The latter allowed a disgraced politician who had resigned to leave Washington without facing criminal prosecution. The former would allow a politician to avoid prosecution and continue to take the office of President.
Based on my take of Obama as a person, I'm pretty sure he'd require her stepping down as a condition of a pardon. Otherwise the public would question her legitimacy for four years.
She cannot be "convicted" of anything so long as she's in office. She would have to be impeached and removed from office (or resign) before she could actually stand trial for whatever crime may have been committed.
There is a lot of historical precedent. A US President can generally claim immunity to everything except an impeachment. Regardless of laws, you'd never find someone capable of arrest the US President. Secret service would quickly fill anyone attempting to do so with bullets. Worst case scenario, the President can go hang out at a military base of which he or she has absolute authority. Good luck having the DC Police SWAT one of those.
A little googling and it turns out you are almost right. The Sergent at Arms of the US Senate can arrest anyone who violates Senate rules, including the president.
I have no idea if the emails are related enough, as I don't have voting rights in the US I see no reason to care about them.
I believe the House of Representatives brings articles of impeachment, not the Senate, and the House will likely hold its Republican majority.
The Senate is only required to actually convict. It's pretty much a disaster simply to be impeached at all. No conviction is really necessary to permanently damage someone politically.
Nothing explicitly prevents it. It doesn't really matter anyhow; Congress has the exclusive power to impeach. Impeachment is the mechanism the constitution provides deal with criminal presidents and the president can't block it.
Make no mistake; the last thing Comey and Clinton+Obama et al. wanted was to fill news cycles with "FBI investigation reopened" 11 days out. It's bad, whatever it is, and this is a CYA move; Comey believes he needs to be able to claim he notified Oversight and made this public prior to the election.
If you can garner the votes in the legislature. If a majority of the house files charges, 2/3 of the senate has to vote in favor. The house seems likely, but it will be the drama of the century to get through the senate going ahead with it, etc.
In the current climate, unless a big group of Democrats in the house side with the Republicans on the charges, it can sloughed off as partisan BS.
We'd also probably need some pretty crazy info in those emails to warrant the sharpness of public invective necessary to have a clear political mandate to go through impeachment. It would have to include some of: large scale impact to national interests, beyond-the-pale vile political conspiracy, dick pics of Bill Clinton, or a clear statement of explicit, willfully avoiding public disclosure of the topic of discussion (of particular national interest).
I see the narrative being around "sour grapes losers" and "can't win, can't govern Republicans."
The big problem with this announcement is that the letter only says "we found some emails and we are reviewing". But in news cycle it will get translated to a guilty verdict and possibly influence election outcome. Shouldn't they have reviewed the emails to see if there is classified information before sending out a letter like this ? Comey surely knew that this letter will be a big deal.
Does it matter if it had classified information or not when a high ranking state official is using a personal private email server to bypass the official one?
Using a private email server was the norm at state department. Collin Powell used a private server and explained the benefits of it to Hillary Clinton. The only reason this bubbled up top was due to the Bengazhi situation. Otherwise, there would not even be an investigation on this.
What's the alternative? Don't tell anyone you're digging into the emails some more and then 5 days after the election tell everyone you found something?
I find Comey's decision to disclose this new investigation less than 2 weeks from election day extremely perplexing.
By all means, perform your investigation, but to announce it immediately before what's arguably one of the most important elections in modern US history? If I were a paranoid man, I'd say that this looks like an attempt by an unelected official to prejudice voters.
He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If there is a smoking gun in the newly discovered emails and he said nothing until after the election, he would be accused of manipulating it in that way.
That may be so, but it doesn't change the fact that HRC (or Trump, for that matter) should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. As it currently stands, an indictment hasn't even been recommended.
Under such circumstances, the exposure of a search for a smoking gun is suspect.
Unfortunately, all we do know is that they might have found something that might be important enough to warrant an investigation that might result in an indictment recommendation, &c, &c. With this in mind, it's more than a little strange.
Unless I've misunderstood Comey's powers of discretion over FBI investigations (which is entirely possible), he has little to no need to "cover his ass."
Not to mention that waiting until after means she controls informally if not formally many of the levers that would be used in the investigation. Can a sitting president be trusted not to interfere in any way possible in an investigation that would take from her her highest life's goal? It gets very muddled.
The question is whether he was obliged to inform the congressional committee they were reopening the case. I would think they'd FIRST do a preliminary investigation to determine if the evidence warranted further investigation (ie. if it would change FBI's position on the DOJ charging Clinton). But I guess as informed voters, it's better to have more information than less, however untimely it is for Hillary.
I totally agree. I desperately want Clinton to win, and I think she'll make a great president. Those who believe her victory must be an illuminati conspiracy should be given as little ammunition as possible.
He did the right thing disclosing now. If voters don't care and Hilary wins anyway, she'll have won with all the information on the table. If the voters do care and Hilary doesn't win, then it would've been pretty shitty to hide that information from them when they had a chance to act on it.
I agree with that sentiment, but it's worth noting that this move by the FBI adds no new information to the public's table. We already knew that they were reviewing emails that we (being the public) don't have access to.
Disclosure of a new investigation (or a new branch of the current investigation, as his letter apparently actually says) is prejudicial in all the same ways that perp walks are.
Actually, saving the worst until just right before the election could be interpreted as saying 'hey I did my job and didn't wait until after' while still ensuring that any investigation and finding would not happen until someone with a pretty safe lead is elected.
He already covered up for her once, because if he had prosecuted her as he would anybody else it would have put the FBI in charge of choosing the president, which is horrible from all kinds of standpoints, but how many times should he cover it up?
Where did you learn that? I'm actually not disputing what you are saying I just didn't know. I understand that her email address wasn't a .gov address, but it could still (depending on the DNS MX record) identify a government controlled server. Couldn't it?
No it didn't. Unless I'm the only person who doesn't check the domain of every email that arrives in his inbox.
Obama is not Sherlock Holmes, and he can be unaware of something, even if there is evidence he could possibly have seen. You need a little more evidence than that to call somebody a liar.
What I don't understand is how in the world does stuff like this happen (Private Email Server). Isn't there anyone handling security for these people? Just like the CIA assigns people to guard the President and the folks around him, why in the world are there not Cyber Security Experts over seeing communications and making sure that everything these folks do follows a certain protocol.
They are not allowed to drive cars and the CIA makes sure they don't. So why are they not monitored to make sure their communications are secure and there is no risk to the nations information.
As a third-party voter I really don't want to get into a discussion about the major candidates.
But as a hacker I am interested in how the political system operates. So let's speculate that a candidate is elected to office and then is indicted on a felony. What happens? Obviously anybody can be elected president, so there's no legal problem. But Congress also is charged with certifying electors. Would they certify electors for a candidate that had legal issues? If they did, the candidate could just pardon themselves once in office.
Interesting question regarding certifying electors. I sure don't know. Wouldn't be surprised if Trump supporting Representatives tries to hold up that process though, were HRC to be found guilty between winning and the certification. I can't imagine the timeline of a trial would allow that to happen though.
Regarding the self-pardoning, as discussed elsewhere, it wouldn't really matter, she could still be impeached. Impeachment is extra-judicial.
I believe what we're discovering is that once a major party picks you, you really can't be tried for any crime. You could be charged. If you lost the election you could be tried. But I'm not seeing how the state could effectively conduct a criminal court case of a major candidate.
This leads me to believe that Congress really has to decide. Beats me whether they should decide before or after the person is sworn in.
(Of course this is just speculating about a generic case.)
Comey was legally obligated to tell Congress this as his office had told Congress that it was finished reviewing the evidence. In this election of course, Trump supporters will look at this as a sign of hillary's crookedness, and HRC supporters will look at this as a way to sway the election.
Also, the emails in question are not from Clinton and were never withheld in the original investigation. They appear to come from the devices of Anthony Weinar and his ex-wife.
Also, as more than one person has reported, the case was never closed.
This reminds me more and more of Julius Caesar and other Roman Republican officials having to stay on the treadmill of the cursus honorum to maintain legal immunity and avoid corruption charges committed while in office.
Everyone shouting "lock her up" doesn't know exactly what they're "locking her up" for, except for something vaguely relate to emails and the fact they don't like her. Oh, also, they've already decided she's guilty of "emails." Either the FBI says "Clinton is guilty of emails" or the system is rigged.
1. She used her official position as Secretary of State representing the United States to solicit $150M++ of dollars in foreign donations for her personal 501c3.
Imagine how this worked. Picture the scene at a US Embassy social function in some small corrupt country: "Oh sure El Presidente, I'd be happy to look into what's holding up your USAID payments. Sayyy, Bill would love to come and deliver a speech for you. By the way, his going rate is $500,000."
Having our Secretary of State asking foreign dignitaries for payments on-the-side irreparably damages our country's reputation in the world. This is some of the most egregious and blatant corruption we have ever seen in a public official.
3. She made copies of government information, which any reasonable person would agree qualifies as some level of classification, to a personal server in her home that was not authorized to store such information (and as a result the Russians stole it).
2. She conducted government business using an unauthorized private server, and did so specifically for the purpose of concealing her actions and correspondence from both internal and official oversight.
4. She set up some type of shadow internal review process to squash entirely legitimate FOIA requests that might reflect poorly on her department or herself.
Routinely, little people are vigorously prosecuted for far, far less. America explicitly rejects having a double standard for royalty, why shouldn't she be subject to the same rules?
I wonder if there is a way to make this thread NOT be flagged to extinction. Perhaps talk only about the technicalities behind this, or compare to distant history.
Political people say "clean this up" about anything they don't want in the media. Anything. Everything.
(I know this because I over consume political news media and they have adopted it as a term; it's really horrifying, they talk about the campaigns attempting to manipulate them instead of doing real analysis)
My reading would be this: "We found some new emails. They're relevant, but we don't know if they're important. We're looking into it."
What I find interesting is the timing of this letter and, possibly, the fact that he wrote it at all. But we can't judge the significance of those without knowing if this is standard procedure. For all we know, he may regularly send letters that say things like "I spelled a word wrong on page 875 of our report. Agents are looking into correcting it and resubmitting the report."
Or this type of letter could be highly unusual, especially days before a presidential election.
Either way, he had to know Chaffetz would be shouting this from the top of a mountain...