Are we witnessing the final implosion of Hillary Clinton? One can only hope...
CNN:
Hillary Clinton's campaign was jolted when FBI Director James Comey delivered the ultimate October surprise.
Eleven days before the 2016 presidential election, Comey announced that the FBI had discovered additional emails and is reviewing them to see whether they are related to the bureau's investigation into Clinton's handling of classified information.So what happened?
It started with the FBI's investigation into Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former New York congressman who was caught over the summer exchanging lewd and sexually suggestive messages with a 15-year-old girl.However, we probably won't know the results of this new FBI investigation until long after the election.
Weiner's estranged wife is Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. And in their look into Weiner's sexting allegations, which began on September 22, investigators from the FBI's New York field office discovered Abedin's emails on Weiner's laptop -- with initial data showing those emails went through Clinton's server.
It was enough to lead FBI Director James Comey to conclude the emails would need to be reviewed to see if he'd need to reopen the investigation he'd closed in July on whether Clinton kept classified information on the private email server she used during her tenure as secretary of state.
Comey was made aware of the emails' existence by mid-October, law enforcement sources have said. He was given a full briefing on Thursday.
Comey decided Friday after a series of "long grueling meetings" with top FBI executives that the FBI needed to review to see whether the emails were related to its investigation into Clinton's server, and a letter would be sent to Congress about the development, a law enforcement source told CNN.
And so, on Friday -- 11 days from the election -- Comey informed eight Senate and House chairmen, who are Republicans, and copied the ranking Democrats on their panels.
Needless to say, Democrats are furious:
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter to Comey on Sunday that he may have violated the Hatch Act, barring political activity by federal officials.The problem with Reid's statement: If Comey had said nothing, he would have been doing a political favor to the Democrats. It would have been a lie of omission. There was no way for Comey to win. Imagine if he announced this AFTER the election? The Republicans could have leveled the same Hatch Act charge at him.
"I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act," Reid said in his letter to Comey. "Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law."
Clinton's campaign is focused largely on the reality that Comey's actions are out of step for the Justice Department and the FBI -- but now that Comey has made his move, the political consequences can't be undone.
On the other hand, Comey might have seen Donald Trump picking up momentum in the polls leading up to the election, and he might have made the move to get in good with his potential new boss. Comey didn't get where he is without learning how to read the shifting political winds.
Of course, if Hillary loses the election, she can blame her husband once again:
The New Yorker:
Comey’s “original sin” was the press conference he held in July regarding the Clinton e-mail investigation. At that press conference, Comey stated that the F.B.I. had found no reason to bring criminal charges against Clinton for using a private e-mail server to handle much of her State Department business, but that Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, extremely classified information.” Comey made clear that he had decided to make this comment without any sign-off from the Justice Department. Ordinarily, when no charges are brought, such matters are not exposed to public view, let alone addressed at press conferences.If not for Bill Clinton's "impromptu" meeting with Loretta Lynch in her plane, this decision wouldn't have been dropped in Comey's lap.
Comey’s supporters argue that he had to act independently, and publicly, because [Attorney General Loretta] Lynch had compromised herself by having an impromptu visit with Bill Clinton late in the investigation. In the ensuing uproar, Lynch promised to accept Comey’s recommendation on whether to bring charges against Clinton. But, as Miller notes, Comey’s press conference triggered a series of other events, including congressional hearings where Comey was forced to defend his decision not to recommend prosecution. Comey’s letter to Congress on Friday updated his earlier statements that the Clinton e-mail investigation had ended.
On top of that, Comey's statement that anyone else would have faced "sanctions" for such actions as Hillary committed only further cemented the view that Comey was politically compromised. Both Comey and the FBI got huge black eyes for that. If Comey had let this newest incident go unmentioned, he would have been committing political suicide, not to mention how the FBI would look owned by the party in power.
However, Dilbert creator Scott Adams has a rather intriguing view of Comey and this latest news:
Scott Adams' Blog:
I’m hearing several interpretations for these two observations:
1. Comey seemed pro-Clinton when he dropped the initial email case.
2. Comey seems anti-Clinton this week because he announced a new round of investigations right before the election.
How can both behaviors be explained? Or, as I like to ask, which movie does the best job of explaining our observations and also predicting the future?
Some say Comey is a political pawn in a rigged system. By that movie script we can explain why he dropped the initial email case. But we can’t explain why he’s acting against Clinton’s interests now. What changed?
...My movie says Comey had good evidence against Clinton during the initial investigation but made a judgement call to leave the decision to the American public. For reasons of conscience, and acting as a patriot, Comey explained in clear language to the public exactly what evidence the FBI found against Clinton. The evidence looked daming because it was. Under this interpretation, Comey took a bullet to his reputation for the sake of the Republic. He didn’t want the FBI to steal this important decision away from the people, but at the same time he couldn’t let the people decide blind. So he divulged the evidence and stepped away, like the action hero who doesn’t look back at the explosion.Read Adams' entire post, but this is easily the best interpretation I have read of why Comey did what he did. I retract every bad thing I ever said about him.
In the second act of this movie, Comey learns that the Weiner laptop had emails that were so damning it would be a crime against the public to allow them to vote without first seeing a big red flag. And a flag was the best he could do because it was too early in the investigation to leak out bits and pieces of the evidence. That would violate Clinton’s rights.
But Comey couldn’t easily raise a red flag to warn the public because it was against FBI policy to announce a criminal investigation about a candidate so close to election day. So Comey had a choice of either taking another bullet for the Republic or screwing the very country that he has spent his career protecting.
In this movie, Comey did the hero thing. He alerted the public to the fact that the FBI found DISQUALIFYING information on the Weiner laptop. And he took a second bullet to his reputation.
In other Hillary news...
Observer:
On September 5, 2006, Eli Chomsky was an editor and staff writer for the Jewish Press, and Hillary Clinton was running for a shoo-in re-election as a U.S. senator. Her trip making the rounds of editorial boards brought her to Brooklyn to meet the editorial board of the Jewish Press.
The tape was never released and has only been heard by the small handful of Jewish Press staffers in the room. According to Chomsky, his old-school audiocassette is the only existent copy and no one has heard it since 2006, until today when he played it for the Observer.
...Speaking to the Jewish Press about the January 25, 2006, election for the second Palestinian Legislative Council (the legislature of the Palestinian National Authority), Clinton weighed in about the result, which was a resounding victory for Hamas (74 seats) over the U.S.-preferred Fatah (45 seats).
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “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.”But Hillary would never rig an election in America, right?
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