No wonder the FBI dragged its feet on Clinton’s emails
Two items.
The FBI was slow in examining the evidence that Hillary Clinton’s emails from her server, containing possibly classified material, were found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop:
The DOJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is reportedly looking at why McCabe neglected for at least three weeks to look at new emails related to the investigation that were found on former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y)’s laptop during the later months of the 2016 election.
Investigators want to know if McCabe or others at the FBI wanted to avoid coming up with results in that probe until after the 2016 election concluded, the Post reports.
Clinton supporters have long argued that the FBI’s late decision to reopen the former secretary of State’s email investigation swung the election to now-President Trump, while the president’s supporters have argued that FBI officials let Clinton off without charges due to political bias…
McCabe was notified in late September or early October, according to the report. For three weeks, however, little changed in the investigation, which some law enforcement officials told the Post was a sign of the issue nearly dying at McCabe’s desk.
The probe was eventually reopened weeks before Election Day.
This is one of the reasons that McCabe seems to be in trouble these days. Maybe he would have been in trouble anyway had Clinton been elected, although for the opposite thing—investigating her emails at all.
So, why the reluctance? One reason could be that they were sure she’d be elected and didn’t want to be on her enemies list. Another could be that they wanted her to be elected and thought the email evidence would damage her chances. Another is that they’re incompetent.
Or some combination of all of this.
But maybe there was still another reason. Here’s what just came out today in the continuing Strzok/Page text saga:
In new texts between the two released Thursday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Page wrote that she was to get an Apple iPhone, likely from the FBI’s IT director.
Texted Strzok: “Hot damn. I’m happy to pilot that…we get around our security/monitoring issues?”
Page: “No, he’s proposing that we just stop following them. Apparently the requirement to capture texts came from omb, but we’re the only org (I’m told) who is following that rule. His point is, if no one else is doing it why should we.”
While it is unclear if the iPhones were private or government, the committee raised concerns of a plot to avoid rules to capture official correspondence by using non-government phones.
So, everybody’s doin’ it. Maybe the entire FBI was vulnerable to similar charges.
“So, why the reluctance? One reason could be that they were sure she’d be elected and didn’t want to be on her enemies link. Another could be that they wanted her to be elected and thought the email evidence would damage her chances. Another is that they’re incompetent.”
Never dismiss the possibility of “and”.
“Rules are for the little people.”
My guess is that the desk jockeys at the FBI and the DOJ were pro hrc/bho. Bho weaponized the abc departments of the district of criminals. One is never misguided if they assume DC is the epicenter of corruption and desire for totalitarianism.
the reason why for so many including me that the russia collusion accusation is absurd is because the assistance (DNC email dumps, podasta’s emails) Trump allegedly received from Putin was so insignificant in moving the needle Trump’s way that Trump would promise anything significant back to Putin in exchange for those. How exactly did Trump assist Putin in hacking the DNC’s emails? Its not like he has their passwords
“One reason could be that they were sure she’d be elected and didn’t want to be on her enemies link. ”
Link works, but I suspect you meant list.
Deep Plunger was statistically likely to be a DNC insider, disenfranchised, disillusioned, now aborted.
AesopFan:
Thanks, will fix.
ICYMI (or them, as the case may be), here’s a round-up of some stuff posted today in various places, some new and some revisited from earlier, but not necessarily by Neo.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456003/devin-nunes-fisa-memo-positioning-ahead-its-release
Andy McCarthy: “Two final thoughts. First, the coverage has tried to make this all about Nunes, and then to lampoon him as alternatively cagy and clueless. In point of fact, Republicans on the committee and throughout the House have been solidly behind disclosure of the memo. Many of these are among law enforcement’s strongest supporters. These include Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), a respected former prosecutor who is part of the GOP mainstream, and Representative Pete King (R., N.Y.), a moderate Republican who has been deeply involved in national-security issues. The point here is to preserve and protect the FBI as an institution, which requires getting to the bottom of any potential effort to exploit the FBI for purposes of electoral politics. Democrats used to think diligent oversight of the FBI’s exercise of national-security powers was pretty important. Second, usually we only find out about claimed abuses of national-security power when they are illegally leaked to the press, which then risks compromising vital intelligence operations by publishing classified information. Generally, the media and Democrats fiercely defend this practice. Here, Nunes and the intelligence committee have gone about things the right way: not leaking, conducting oversight, and carefully handling classified information so that the things the public should know are disclosed without compromising vital intelligence and its sources. Yet, Democrats are condemning the process and much of the media seems strangely indifferent, if not opposed, to disclosure. It’s almost as if the press cannot get behind public accountability unless it is the New York Times, rather than a congressional committee, deciding what gets published and which government operations warrant careful examination.”
https://www.judicialwatch.org/bulletins/russian-dossier-enter-sid/
“The Guardian reports that the new Shearer document makes some of the same allegations about Mr. Trump as the original Christopher Steele dossier, including “lewd acts at a five-star hotel” in Moscow. It also notes that Steele passed on the Shearer report to the FBI in October 2016, but would not vouch for its accuracy. That’s worth pausing over.
According to the Guardian, Steele provided “a copy [of the Shearer report] because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.” If the reporting here is accurate, that’s quite a coincidence–that Cody Shearer and Christopher Steele were hearing the same things from different sources at pretty much the same time. A closer look at timelines and sources might be revealing. If Sid and Cody are behind the original Russian dossier sources, that would be big news indeed.”
https://spectator.org/intelligence-recognizes-presidential-authority-a-case-of-too-little-too-late/
“Suddenly the agencies that were out to get him want Trump to protect them and maybe even keep them from going to jail.
The Intelligence agencies’ pressures on President Trump to block the House of Representatives’ decision to release a summary of the FBI’s highly classified misdeeds are instructive comedy. The House’s decision shows what no one should ever have doubted: the FBI, CIA, etc. are not the source of authority over America’s secrets. They merely administer secrets and clearances on behalf of the one and only authority over the Executive Branch: The President of the United States. He clears them – not the other way around. Congress, as a co-equal, popularly elected branch of government, may hold or release such information as it chooses, and pay such attention as it chooses to the President’s opinions. Thus far, the Constitution.
With regard to Donald Trump, however, the Intelligence Agencies have been pretending that they are in charge of such matters. They have tried that with other presidents – slow-rolling clearances for appointees they don’t like and threatening them with security violations (the Valerie Plame Case investigation that CIA and the New York Times instigated well-nigh paralyzed the G.W. Bush White House). Usually they have had little success. Barack Obama, for example, simply rejected the FBI’s non-clearance of key appointments, and made them personally, instantly. But Trump, by and large, has let them get away with it, bowing to the Agencies’ objections to his nominees – even refusing to prosecute high officials who have disclosed the sources and methods of communications intelligence to the press.
The FBI’s top leadership – whose careers, business dealings, politics, marriages and extramarital affairs intertwine – invested itself incompetently and illegally into the 2016 election campaign against Donald Trump. In part to cover itself, it launched the so-called “Russia probe.” Its members are personally, deeply interested in keeping the public from seeing the documents concerning these activities. They raised the familiar shield: release would compromise the sources and methods of national security.
The House of Representatives’ Republican majority wanted the documents made public, issued a subpoena for them, and was prepared to jail senior FBI for contempt had they not complied with it. The House compromised, being satisfied by viewing them and making a summary, which it has voted to make public. The FBI and the Justice Department’s bureaucracy, being out of options for saving their reputations, their pensions, and perhaps for keeping themselves out of jail, urge President Trump to advise the House to guard the secrecy of the summary, of the activities that it describes, and hence to save their bacon.”
A pithy, albeit grammatically challenged, PowerLine commenter at this post today:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/02/in-search-of-lost-texts-7.php
“They succeed in behaving corruptly because we assume they are as honorable as us and they assume we are as corrupt as them.”
Sophisticated point shaving. Maybe the giant contribution to McCabe’s wife campaign was the price to point shave the investigation. Not sure about the timing.
But money or favors were exchanged here. Quid pro quo.
“Clinton supporters have long argued that the FBI’s late decision to reopen the former secretary of State’s email investigation swung the election to now-President Trump.”
Gosh, I thought it was the Rooskies.
I really wish they’d make up their minds (such as they are) already…
When does the loyal organization man devolve into a zealot? When does the organization become so rotten as to be counterproductive?
Alan Dershowitz has Mueller’s number.
Reminds me of a story about self-interested dissembing by the navy.
Matthew M Says:
February 1st, 2018 at 7:07 pm
When does the loyal organization man devolve into a zealot? When does the organization become so rotten as to be counterproductive?
Alan Dershowitz has Mueller’s number.
Reminds me of a story about self-interested dissembing by the navy.
* * *
The Navy story shows that leaks, cover-ups, and malfeasance in office are not nowise new things.
Dersh had this to say, which intrigued me:
“Dershowitz then recalled his experience with Mueller. He stated that he talked to Mueller about prosecutorial and FBI misconduct and Mueller stated “It’s a non-starter to talk to me about FBI misconduct or prosecutorial misconduct. It’s a non-starter. He doesn’t want to hear about that. He is in the business of protecting the FBI, protecting prosecutors, at all costs. I don’t suggest he’s unethical, but he’s very zealous.”
He added that this makes Mueller “effective at his job, but the job of a prosecutor is to do justice, not to get as many notches on his belt as possible.””
But Mueller is an honorable man…
Matthew M,
The USS Iowa coverup is all too typical. Authority without accountability guarantees injustice.
Zealousness that is willfully blind to prosecutorial misconduct is prima facie evidence of a lack of ethics. Mueller’s corruption is in service of a political agenda. He’s attempting to facilitate a political coup and should he succeed, he’ll be guilty of treason.
The real question is this- at what point did Comey find out that McCabe was sitting on them? Remember the timeline here- McCabe apparently learned of them on or before September 28th, but Comey didn’t send the letter to Congress until October 28th. And remember this- there was no effort to even examine the additional material until almost a week after Comey’s letter.
It is an odd story all in all. It would be very, very interesting to have all of McCabe’s e-mails and texts from the time period in question, and I assume the IG has them. It would also be interesting to know exactly when Comey learned of the new material, because he also either sat on them for a month, or no one told him until late in October.
You want to find out why McCabe helped Clinton at every turn- find out where the money donated to his wife’s state senate campaign went- what checks were drawn and to whom. I think it likely that almost all of it ended up in the pockets of the McCabe’s and their families and a few important friends and that the senate campaign was a front for laundering it.
Here is what I think happened. McCabe learned of the e-mails from the people working on the Wiener investigation, and made the conscious decision to bury the material until after the election at the very least, but he knew this could have potential consequences if it is learned after the election that he had this material and chose to do nothing with it. Sometime between September 28th and October 28th, he decided that he didn’t want to be that point man who made that decision should it turn out to be disastrous- so he informed Comey about the material and made Comey the point man to take the heat and the decision. However, McCabe might have been unaware that Comey had sent the Congressional committees a letter promising to inform them of any changes of status in the Clinton investigation, and felt he was no only trapped as the man in the seat with the material, but also having made a very specific promise that made his position even more precarious, so he sent the letter to Congress almost as soon as McCabe informed him of the new material.