The awfulness of the Clinton email scandal
See this (read the whole thing):
This mass destruction of evidence was known to Comey. It’s in his investigative case summary. Yet he couldn’t make an obstruction case?
“Any one of those in that long list says obstruction of justice,” Ratcliffe said. “Collectively, they scream obstruction of justice.”
Ignoring such evidence leads “not just reasonable prosecutors but reasonable people to believe that maybe the decision on this was made a long time ago not to prosecute Hillary Clinton,” he added.
And this, about how it was the DOJ and not the FBI that granted immunity in the emails case:
“The FBI doesn’t grant immunity to anybody, the Department of Justice is able to grant very different kinds of immunity,” Comey said. “If new and substantial evidence develops a witness lied [under immunity], of course the Department of Justice can pursue it. Nobody gets lifetime immunity.”
Comey told Rep. Ben Sasse (R-NB) that Mills needed the immunity “because without it, Mills would have fought investigators tooth and nail in an effort to withhold her computer.” But as Guy Benson points out, Hillary has claimed she and her team have fully cooperated. Well, doesn’t this declaration contradict her statement?…
Despite all of this, the FBI and DOJ allowed Mills to act as Hillary’s attorney and sit in on Hillary’s interview even though she was a witness.
And I found this in the comments at Legal Insurrection:
““because without it, Mills would have fought investigators tooth and nail in an effort to withhold her computer.””
Physically when the FBI executed the search warrant? Because I’ve never heard of a witness/target/whatever setting the terms for what evidence FBI investigators were entitled to have and under what conditions. If this had been anyone else the FBI would have simply seized the evidence. Cheryl Mills nor her attorneys could have done nothing about it. Getting a judge to sign off on a search warrant is not an adversarial procedure.
Basically Comey is admitting that Mills was in charge of this investigation , on behalf of Clinton. That’s been clear from start to finish. When Mills was interviewed, she and her attorneys set the parameters for what the investigators were allowed to ask. When investigators asked about Clinton’s email procedures Mills et al shut down the interview. And at the end, when Clinton was interviewed Mills, and immunized target in the investigation herself, sat in as Clinton’s attorney.
This is despicable, but it’s clear that Obama and his court toadies and throne sniffers such as Comey don’t have to lie well. In fact, the more obvious the lie the better because it just serves to highlight the fact that they’re giving Congress and the American people the finger and telling us that they’re above the law.
Which pretty much sums up my reaction.
So, all you have to do to get immunity is Just Say No?
But it’s that last part of the LI comment I quoted that strikes me as especially true and very insightful. One of the things I’ve noticed during the entire Obama administration is how clear it is that there is no objectivity and no impartiality in institutions we used to think were both—the press, long long ago (although I believe that was always an illusion); the FBI; the DOJ; the IRS. The lies of elected officials during the Obama administration have become more blatant, and that’s because the people involved feel immunized (usually metaphorically speaking, although in the case of the emails it’s a literal immunization) in advance. They know they will not be held accountable. They know that a press that’s almost wholly on their side will not turn on them. They know the American people won’t be able to figure it out on their own, or if they do figure it out they will be powerless to stop them.
[NOTE: And in connection with the last paragraph of this post, please see this post of mine that counters the popular meme on the right that the GOP ever “took impeachment off the table.”]
I have forwarded several of the reports of Comey’s testimony to my email address list. I know that in many instances I am preaching to the choir; and, unfortunately, most of those I really want to read, will not. But, one must do one’s duty.
I have prefaced several of the emails with the earthy, but descriptively accurate, observation that it is “time to pump the septic tank in Washington”. (Admittedly, most Americans know little about septic tanks, except that they are full of smelly stuff) The miasma in DC transcends all other issues. Trump’s hole card.
One might profitably contrast this view of “awfulness” with the complimentary sentiment on the political left, or at least that portion of the political left which has utterly abandoned any pretense at respect for the Constitution of the United States and its measured sobriety: namely, delightfulness. Something to be highly celebrated, a kind of liberation in their view.
To say that another way, it is a deep admiration for the political principle “I Won”, or in the older terms, “might makes right”. It’s a positive thing we losers wouldn’t understand.
In a sense, the “giving [of] the finger” needn’t be understood so much as a directly personal matter, toward the “Congress” or “the American people”, so much as it can perhaps be better understood as an abstraction, a theoretical victory salute. For the theoretical stance of the Constitution, centered in great measure on properties designed to avoid any taint of tyranny has been entirely overthrown — and perhaps best of all, overthrown with the cooperation and acquiescence of the Americans themselves.
It’s a sign of a boon, a kindness, a good done for the Americans that the Americans can so readily participate in their correction. Indeed, the telos of tens of decades of hard political work.
I think it wrong to assume the FBI executed any search warrants. I seriously doubt, now, that the DOJ authorized anything of the sort. I was willing a few weeks ago to give Comey the benefit of the doubt, but that position is no longer tenable.
And, of course, in allowing Mills to hold onto the computer, immunity or not, I think it pretty obvious that anything really damaging managed not to be there when she finally turned it over.
The e-mail scandal and obvious fixing of the DOJ by either/both Obama and Bill Clinton shows quite conclusively how we now have two systems of justice. One for the elites in power and one for we peons.
This elite level corruption all became much more visible during the Clinton years. White House travel office to cronies, FBI files on political enemies, renting the Lincoln bedroom, allowing sale of hi tech to China for campaign donations, end of term pardons for campaign donors, and decamping with White House furniture and china at the end of the term. Just to mention a few of the corrupt things they did. And they got away with it all.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Secretary of State job was viewed as a place where Hillary could further peddle influence and enrich her, Bill and the Clinton Foundation. The private e-mail server was meant as a clandestine way to hide her influence peddling from prying eyes.
The Clintons have always been on the make. Yet, if you gave them a lie detector test, they would pass it with flying colors. In their minds what they have done is not wrong, it is their reward for being for all the right progressive causes. Obama is not any different.
There were 16 other reasons to believe that clinton wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get what she is so undeserving of.
Alas, folks put their faith in the worst non-reason of all.
On the proposed seizure of Cheryl Mill’s computer, one may be reminded of the confrontation scene towards the end of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [2005], in which one of the pan-dimensional beings shouts “Take his brain!”. Startlingly rude; so forward.
Let’s hope for AG Rudi Guliani under a Trump administration and a no holds prosecution that puts the Clintons and their bootlickers in prison.
I imagine President Trump will be open for deals with Hillary and anyone else. Trump is all about the deals and the Benjamins.
As the Man said in the debate the other night, “That’s called business, by the way.”
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
–James Joyce
But, yeah, the email scandal is awful.
The day Comey didn’t indict while at the same time explaining how guilty Clinton was, my heart hurt. I had tried to tell myself, it was a 50-50 chance. I half-believed those people on the right who said Comey was a stand-up guy who wouldn’t let politics get in the way of justice.
Now we know it was a sham from the git-go. These immunity give-aways prove it
It’s a shame, but I realize I’m just another human being living in history and the tide in my time and place is running against me and my friends.
I once thought such things couldn’t happen in the US. Now I know better. And the liberals I remember who were constantly warning about a corrupt lawless elite running things for their own benefit are the ones, largely, who brought us here.
“And the liberals I remember who were constantly warning about a corrupt lawless elite running things for their own benefit are the ones, largely, who brought us here.” – huxley
Would only add that both sides contributed to this.
Every time we say “the outta be a law for (fill in the blank on favorite issue)” we are undermining the idea of limited government.
It has become an arms race of lawmaking that each side contributes, and each side taking the intended uses of those laws and extending them beyond original intent for their own purposes.
The power invested in the size and scope of our government is itself corrupting. Reduce the size and scope of government and we reduce the scope and opportunity for corruption.
huxley,
Leftists want to abolish the 2nd “for the children”. But only pretend to abhor a police state as long as it is their police state. That is the real reason they want to disarm us. Its a bit more difficult to set up their own police state when a few million are willing to respond with lead.
NR’s Andrew McCarthy has an article from 9/26 that explains why he predicted last January this whole sham of a so-called “investigation” was, by design, never, ever going to lead to an indictment – because the FBI knew that Obama was using a pseudonym to email Clinton at her unsecured server. Thus, Obama was also violating all sorts of security laws and protocols as well, and he would be directly dragged into any trial.
Obama’s Conflict Tanked the Clinton E-mail Investigation – As Predicted
Yancey Ward:
No one suggested the FBT has already done a search or executed a search warrant. That reference was a hypothetical about an alternate approach.
Correction: FBI, not FBT.
I’m away from home and on my cellphone.
This is what banana republics do. At least with the change in the makeup of the American populace, we are starting to look like our southern cousins in all respects. Crony capitalism and two separate strata societies are part and parcel of the bargain.
McCarthy’s reasoning also applies to Benghazigate.
The malefactor there was the President, not the Secretary of State.
Benghazi wasn’t even a diplomatic compound.
It was a CIA STATION.
Ambassador Stevens was supposed to make a pit stop at a ‘fake’ State Department facility — which was nothing more that a thin ‘cover’ for the existence of the CIA Station.
The primary purpose of the CIA Station was to purchase back ManPADS from every source possible.
Its secondary purpose was to purchase ‘deniable weapons’ for transfer to the Sunni fanatics in Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Only Libyan cast-offs fit the bill.
These were being pumped out by the shipload.
Kaddaffy had stock piled enough weapons — great and small — to equip every Muslim from the Atlantic to the Suez. He kept buying to keep Moscow in his corner, long after such weapons had any marginal utility for him. His army wasn’t going to be invading anybody.
The REAL story with the email scandal is that it only exists as a mechanism to hide slush funding of the Clinton Foundation — itself a HUGE charity-fraud.
Like Boss Tweed, the graft engine that the Clinton’s crafted is so astounding that its scope appears to have no limit.
The MSM: crickets.
NR’s Andrew McCarthy has an article from 9/26 that explains why he predicted last January this whole sham of a so-called “investigation” was, by design, never, ever going to lead to an indictment — because the FBI knew that Obama was using a pseudonym to email Clinton at her unsecured server
geokstr: Yes, that is a key insight for understanding this travesty.
Or as Don Corleone said in The Godfather:
But I didn’t know until this day that it was Barzini all along.
neo says: “They know they will not be held accountable. They know that a press that’s almost wholly on their side will not turn on them. They know the American people won’t be able to figure it out on their own, or if they do figure it out they will be powerless to stop them.”
I may be channeling Eric but this defeatism has to stop. Instead of decrying all the awfulness of the Obamites and the Democrats to come, Neo, how about putting your mind to ways to stop them?
I have been reading Theodore Beale’s (aka Vox Day) book SJWs always lie and despicable though Beale is, the book at least give some methods by which the Left in some small ways has been defeated. He describes the Gamergate tactics that were able to seriously damage SJW gamer websites by targeting their sponsors. Ultimately one of the gamergaters’ largest targets, gawker.com, was totally destroyed albeit with the help of a lawsuit by Peter Thiel.
Each of us has to find our own ‘activism’ or take responsibility for our inaction. For me, it involves donating the small amounts I can directly to political candidates that may make a difference. Here in CA, i am donating to swing assembly and senate seats to try to keep the Demcrats from gaining a supermajority. Nationwide, I am donating to swing senate races particularly to Joe Heck in Nevada since that is a relatively small media market where small donations can make a difference.
I will also start writing emails to sponsors of particularly egregious political reports on local television and radio stations.
It is fun to complain but more satisfying to do something about the problem.
Bob_CA, let me just speak up in Neo’s defense to say that she’s doing PLENTY about the problem by writing about it so thoroughly, intelligently and relentlessly. One of the reasons we have this problem is that the MSM won’t cover it. People like Neo help get the truth out there so that people like you can do the things you’re able to do to make a difference. She’s not just complaining to her friends in her living room; she’s informing people by using a public platform. The difference is huge, and what she’s doing, both in motivating others to act and in documenting what’s happening for history, is critically important.
Angelo Codevilla is always worth reading; this is on the existential nightmare of the November election.
http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/after-the-republic/
A good take-down of Comey. His dissent at the end is interesting: what does he think he has been doing?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/09/gowdy-strikes-a-nerve.php
“In the final minute of the video, Gowdy pays an emotional tribute to the FBI based on his experience. He draws a contrast between the FBI he worked with and the one that is visible in the apparent anomalies in the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton case. “That is not the FBI that I used to work with,” Gowdy says.
Gowdy struck a nerve. Dropping his mask of impassivity, Comey indignantly responds: “I hope someday when this political craziness is over you will look back again on this because this is the FBI you know and love. This was done by pros in the right way. That’s the part I have no patience for.””
In denial, much?
Never mind the actual facts in this case.
I can imagine a situation where the FBI could reason that, so long as the unvarnished facts are placed in front of the voters in time for them to take those facts into consideration in making their voting decision, it would not be proper for the FBI to indict a candidate just before an election. Not all indictments (O. J.) however conclusive the evidence, result in a conviction. Indicting a candidate during an election should result in the defeat of that candidate thus depriving the voters of their choice.
Given the pardoning and other powers of a President the decision is less clear when the contest is for the Presidency. Something that could be settled by a personal meeting on the tarmac of an airport, perhaps?
Ending “rule of law” is what voting for Hillary means. All the personal bad characteristics about Trump are bad, but personal to him; yes, somewhat also to the alt-right he is slightly enabling.
But Hillary victory means “Democratic Party Royals” are above the law.
Clinton had a Royal Flush. Even if she was sent to jail, she would just drag Hussein down with her, and Hussein would have to pardon her to avoid jail himself.
There is no Rule of Law in America. That’s the myth people keep talking about.
It is fun to complain but more satisfying to do something about the problem.
The Roman Catholics also used money to substitute for the work of saving souls. If you paid the Pope enough once upon a time, he could guarantee the salvation of your soul on this Earth.
The idea that one must do the work and not just throw money at a problem that never gets fixed, no matter how much money people throw at it, is something people don’t like to think about. It would involve doing something direct. Getting dirty. Fixing police corruption personally.
If GamerGate was about a bunch of people using class action lawsuits, that would be merely a victory for the lawyer bars and associations.
Welcome to be a Mediterranean country!!!
How does it feel?