There are more things in heaven and earth…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Recently scientists announced:

Triple-star systems with detected planets are rare enough; this is believed to be just the fifth such discovery. But the giant gassy world in this one ”” formally known as Planet HD 131399Ab ”” has the biggest known orbit in a multi-star system.

Its orbit is double Pluto’s ”” or roughly 550 Earth years. That’s how long it takes to orbit its system’s brightest star, a super-size sun. The two smaller stars orbit one another and, as a pair, orbit with their big stellar brother…

During part of the planet’s orbit, all three stars are visible on the same day, offering triple sunrises and sunsets and allowing for day and night. For about one-fourth of its year ”” around 100 to 140 Earth years ”” there’s continuous daylight. That’s because as the big sun is rising, the two smaller ones are setting.

“With three suns, the planet will see different weird combinations of sunrises and sunsets,” said co-author Daniel Apai, a University of Arizona astronomer.

He added: “This is a system for which I would not want to design a calendar.”

Case studies for Comey: Part II(b)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here, and Part II(a) is here.]

In addition to the Petraeus case (which I discussed in Part IIa), another well-known case that’s relevant to Hillary Clinton’s emails is that of Sandy Berger, described here.

It’s never been all that clear why Berger removed classified documents (the original and some copies of a single report) from the National Archives reading room and lied to authorities about it (he says it was to prepare for testimony he was about to give). But like Petraeus, Berger was threatened with jail and ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge. The Berger case seems to have involved a decision to prosecute in a situation that seems to have featured less serious offenses than Hillary’s rather than more.

Politico offers this summary of some of the relevant cases:

Former FBI agent J.J. Smith was charged with five felonies, including grossly negligent mishandling of classified information for allowing an FBI informant to obtain highly sensitive bureau information. Smith was having an affair with the informant, Katrina Leung, who was also working for Chinese intelligence. Leung wound up with several FBI documents including a “Secret” memo on Chinese fugitives and an unclassified FBI phone directory…

In a plea deal, Smith pleaded guilty to a single felony count of lying to investigators. He was sentenced to three months house arrest, three years probation and a $10,000 fine…

There are also a handful of cases involving lower-level employees or contractors where prosecutors have pursued criminal charges or jail time despite the lack of a clear public link to espionage, leaking or some other malfeasance.

A Boeing engineer who took home what prosecutors called “an adult giraffe”’s-worth of sensitive information on missile defense programs, Abraham Lesnik, pled guilty in 2008 to a felony charge of unauthorized retention of classified data.

Lesnik’s travel and ties to Israel appear to have been a factor, but prosecutors said they had no evidence he planned to misuse the roughly 2000 classified documents, including about 400 marked top secret found on a thumb drive, laptop and other devices at his California home and in a storage locker…

The toughest punishment handed down in recent memory for mishandling classified information went to former National Security Agency analyst Kenneth Ford Jr., who was sentenced in 2006 to six years in prison for taking to his home two boxes of classified documents and other records from NSA headquarters in Maryland. He was also convicted of lying on a job application form.

Here’s another article about Kenneth Ford. If you read it you will see that not only was his offense far less serious than Clinton’s, but he may also have been set up by a girlfriend.

Then there’s the Nishimura case, in which a Naval officer was charged for offenses which also seem less than Hillary’s and have no intent element. What’s more, this case was the result of an FBI investigation:

Just last year, former Naval Reserve Commander Bryan Nishimura was charged with misdemeanor mishandling of classified information he acquired during his service in Afghanistan. He admitted that he often moved classified data, including satellite imagery, to unclassified systems and brought it back to the U.S. when he returned.

After coming under investigation, Nishimura threw some of the storage media in a Folsom, Calif. lake. He was sentenced to two years probation and a $7,500 fine.

Giuliani said the way Clinton disposed of many of her emails could similarly buttress a prosecution.

You can find more information on the Nishimura case here.

The argument is presented in this article that the big distinction between Hillary and Nishimura is that in Nishimura’s plea bargain he admitted he “knew that he was only authorized to view such CLASSIFIED data in digital format on authorized government computers, and was not permitted to remove CLASSIFIED data from such authorized government computers.” But as with Petraeus, one can assume that this admission in the plea deal occurred because authorities were threatening to go ahead with a prosecution. “Legal experts quoted in a Wall Street Journal article noted that Clinton’s case cannot be compared to the cases of Petraeus, Deutch, or Nishimura” because she “denied knowing that any of the information at issue was secret or classified.” So does the main distinction between Hillary’s case and theirs boil down to “she didn’t know” or “she denied knowing”? But of course she knew or should have known; it’s bizarre to think she actually didn’t know merely because she said she didn’t know, and then to use that as a reason not to prosecute her.

In addition, as I’ve written before, there is simply no “similar situation” or “similar circumstance” (Comey’s phrases) to Clinton’s case. None of these previous cases involves a person in an extremely high position setting up an entire system to evade the law, a system which lasted for years, and then lying about it. What Hillary did was no accident, and no episode (like Sandy Berger’s, for example)—it was a seamless pattern purposely designed to circumvent the rules, and then much of the possible evidence was destroyed by Clinton’s lawyers. The fact that many people were involved in the wrongdoing does not absolve her, it merely raises the question of their possible complicity as well.

Hillary Clinton had a big job with big responsibilities, and she committed to what appears at the very least to have been a large, long-term, and potentially risky course of action. The unasked question (at least by the FBI) is: why did she do it? To evade FOIA laws, for example? What was her intent in designing the entire system? The FBI appears remarkably uncurious. But a lot of people smell a rat, and they don’t like it that such a person is probably going to be the next president of the United States.

Case studies Part II(a): relevant precedents for the Clinton email investigation

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here. I found as I researched and composed Part II that, as I had suspected, to write it properly would take several weeks of solid work and end up the equivalent of a lengthy law review article. I would have to read the court opinions in case after case after case and analyze them in great detail in order to understand all the similarities and all the differences, and I just don’t have the time and energy to do that. I wish someone would, but it’s not going to be me.

Instead, I’ve written this relatively brief look at some of the cases, done in a cursory way that doesn’t dig into those details. So I apologize in advance if I missed something important. I also found that, even then, the post was getting so long I had to divide Part II into two further parts, a and b.]

In his statement announcing that he was not recommending the prosecution of Hillary Clinton, FBI Director Comey mentioned that other cases of mishandling classified information that have been prosecuted contained an element of intent (or quantity of material exposed, or obstruction of justice, or disloyalty) that he feels is lacking in the Clinton email situation. Although intent is not an element of the crime in the statute as written by Congress, Comey seemed to be saying that as far as prosecution is concerned, it should be and in fact has been in the past.

However, Comey didn’t offer any details of what cases he might be talking about, so we really can’t examine his thinking. But some writers have tried to fill that gap. Writers on the left have emphasized differences between those cases and Hillary’s emails, whereas writers on the right have emphasized similarities or even ways in which Hillary’s offenses were more serious. And of course before looking at the cases, one must always keep in mind the fact that intent was purposely left out of the statute as written by Congress; “gross negligence” was established as the standard instead.

Andrew McCarthy attempt to explain why this was done. It was not arbitrary:

…[L]et’s for argument’s sake concede Comey’s premise that [Hillary Clinton] did not intend to make classified information vulnerable to hostile hackers when she purposely caused its transfer from the government’s secure server system to her own woefully non-secure system. Still, the felony statute at issue does not call for proof that she intended the harm done to the United States. Prosecutors need only prove what Comey so ably outlined: Clinton purposely engaged in the reckless behavior ”“ the installation and use of an impermissible and amateurishly non-secure, non-government server system ”“ that made harm to the United States virtually inevitable…

In criminalizing the grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, Congress sought to accomplish two objectives: (a) the protection of national security; and (b) the admonition to officials privileged with access to classified information that they have a high obligation to protect the secrecy of that information.

So Comey’s focus on “intent” was highly unusual, because there was a reason that intent was considered by Congress to be irrelevant and “gross negligence” sufficient to make the acts criminal.

Now to some of the cases. The Petraeus case is probably the most high-profile, and here’s an article that tries to argue that Petraeus’ offenses were different and somehow worse than Hillary’s, or at least more amenable to prosecution:

But as Michelle Lee has explained, Clinton’s case really is not like that of Petraeus. As part of his plea agreement, Petraeus admitted to mishandling information that he had known was highly classified; lied to the FBI during its investigation; and admitted to doing that, too. Petraeus acknowledged that these things were “knowing and deliberate.”

Unfortunately, there’s a paywall I can’t get past in order to read the Michelle Lee piece for myself. But my immediate reaction from reading that summary is to note that, if these admissions were part of Petraeus’ plea bargain, in order to get that far he must have been threatened with prosecution—and prosecution on a more serious charge, at that. If the FBI had threatened Hillary with prosecution on a serious charge I wonder what information she might have disclosed (probably none, but then again she’s not Petraeus, she’s Hillary). Like Petraeus, Clinton certainly “mishandled information that she had known was highly classified” (Comey said as much in his statement), but she has not admitted to doing so because (among other things) she’s never been in a plea bargain situation, unlike Petraeus.

And as far as her lying to the FBI goes—well, we already know there’s no transcript of her interview. We know that Hillary has lied repeatedly about almost every aspect of her email system, although it’s unknown whether she lied to the FBI (lying to the press is not a crime). But it certainly doesn’t seem that Comey has a clue whether she did or didn’t lie to the FBI (watch this video from around minute 1:23.00 to around minute 1:24.30 to see what I’m talking about).

Even the generally Democrat-friendly Politifact can’t quite figure out which offense was worse, Petraeus’ or Clinton’s, which should tell you something. Those who think Petraeus did worse seem to rely on the fact that he lied to investigators—well, as I said, we already know Clinton lied to the press and Congress, and it’s more than possible that she’s lied to the FBI as well (although she was never threatened with prosecution as Petraeus was, so there’s no comparison in that sense, either).

What we do know is that Clinton didn’t just take some files or classified information and show them to one person she trusted. She set up an entire email system designed to circumvent the secure system, sent classified information to a number of people, and exposed the information to hackers galore all around the world. How on earth this could be construed as less serious than what Petraeus did is beyond me. Nor was it the least bit unintentional.

One of the most sadly comical aspects of Comey’s testimony yesterday in front of the House questioners was to say that Hillary Clinton wasn’t “sophisticated” enough to understand some of the classified markings on the emails. Comey’s argument was ludicrous:

I leave you with that for today. I hope to have Part IIb (the conclusion) tomorrow.

Emerging thoughts on the Dallas shooting of police

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s an awful lot to digest today, a lot.

Now it is being reported that during last night’s sniper attack in Dallas 12 officers and two civilians were shot, and five officers have died. That may be the largest death toll of police deliberately shot in one incident in this country, although I haven’t been able to ascertain for sure whether that’s true. In addition, one of the perpetrators is dead, not a suicide as originally reported but killed by a police-detonated “bomb robot” after a lengthy standoff.

Attacks on police have certainly occurred in this country before, but the aspect of last night’s killings that made it possible for the perpetrator[s] to shoot so very many officers seems to have been that the gunfire came from above, sniper-style. When I first heard some of the details of last night, one thought that occurred to me was that all or some of these snipers seem to have had specialized training, perhaps military in nature, to have been able to pull off something of this magnitude without injuring even more civilians. Another thought of mine was that whoever it was doing the shooting, this person or people didn’t much care whether civilians were killed, because firing into a demonstration like that is obviously going to expose demonstrators to grave risk, too.

Authorities have now identified the dead perpetrator as:

…Micah X. Johnson, 25, a former Army reservist and resident of the Dallas area…

Johnson had no known criminal history or ties to terror groups, the official said, and has relatives in Mesquite, Texas, which is just east of Dallas…

Authorities believe Johnson belonged to an informal gun club and took copious amounts of target practice, according to a law enforcement official…

Brown said a hostage negotiator spoke with the gunman at length before he was killed about 2:30 a.m.. The chief said the attacker said he was upset “with white people” and with recent police shootings. The suspect also said that he was not affiliated with any groups and that he acted alone, Brown said.

“The suspect said we will eventually find the IEDs,” Brown said, a reference to explosives. “He wanted to kill officers. And he expressed killing white people, killing white officers, he expressed anger for Black Lives Matter.”

So there’s fodder there for the anti-gun people (belonging to a gun club, etc.)—although inevitably they would use this opportunity anyway, no matter what, to make guns the culprit. However, a man this determined is going to get guns any way he can, despite any sort of gun control (plus he had no criminal record or other red flags, as far as we know).

I wonder, also, whether any of the people who have spent the last couple of years screaming police brutality against blacks are reflecting on how long the police held off killing this guy—how much forbearance police showed under the circumstances with five of their fellow officers dead.

It remains to be seen whether the other people in custody are connected to this guy or whether he really did act alone, as he stated. It’s hard to believe the latter, because so many people seem to perceive—from the direction and scope of the gunfire—that there were multiple shooters. But eyewitnesses can often be wrong.

There is little question in my mind that the perpetrator or perpetrators wished to increase racial enmity in this country through this act. My guess is that his or their philosophy is similar to that of a group I wrote about in a 2014 post on cop killers of the early 1970s, the BLA-affiliated murderers of NYPD officers Rocco Laurie and Greg Foster:

Probably the most famous police officer ambush case was that of partners and Vietnam vets Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, which occurred in January of 1972. Witnesses and an investigation indicated that they were shot in the back by BLA [Black Liberation Army] members as the officers walked down the street on their beat, and then shot again multiple times as they lay dying and the murderers had grabbed their service revolvers. The murders of Foster and Laurie caused a furor because they were part of a war on police, but also because both were well-liked, young, handsome, left young grieving wives and a great deal of fear in the NYPD, and because they were good friends and an interracial team (Foster was black and Laurie white). There was a 1974 book and a 1975 movie about the heinous crime, and although there were suspects (some of which have died or been killed in the ensuing years), no one has ever been tried for their murders.

The atmosphere today resembles the feeling that was in the air back in the early 70s, and that is most definitely not a good thing. This mood could be felt building and building prior to the murder of Ramos and Liu [two NYPD police officers ambushed and murdered at the time I wrote the post, in December of 2014], and the fear is that it will keep on building. Today, unlike in the 70s, even our leadership””and by that I mean Barack Obama (who consorts with the likes of Al Sharpton), Eric Holder, Bill de Blasio, for example””fans the flames of the hatred in ways subtle and not-so-subtle.

I wrote another post in 2014 about Foster and Laurie and the BLA:

Foster, who was black, and Laurie, who was white, were apparently targeted because of the interracial aspects of their partnership:

Two days [after their murder], police received a hand-printed letter signed by the BLA, a violent militant group which targeted and assassinated police officers across the country, claiming responsibility for killing Laurie and Foster.

“They were targeting what they called the ”˜salt-and-pepper,’ the black and white teams, and they didn’t like that, that the blacks and whites were working together,” Mrs. Laurie said.

There had been an ambush of a similarly interracial team the previous year, apparently committed by the same group.

You can read more about that group here; it was an offshoot of the Black Panthers, and was explicitly leftist in its belief system:

The newly formed BLA believed that “the character of reformism is based on unprincipled class collaboration with our enemy” and asserted the following principles:

That we are anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist.
That we must of necessity strive for the abolishment of these systems and for the institution of Socialistic relationships in which Black people have total and absolute control over their own destiny as a people.
That in order to abolish our systems of oppression, we must utilize the science of class struggle, develop this science as it relates to our unique national condition.

That somewhat explains the group’s targeting of interracial police teams, who were probably seen as examples of “reformist class collaboration with the enemy.” The BLA was thought to be responsible for at least 13 police killings over the years as well as many many other acts of violence (including an airplane hijacking). The list is very long; you can read it at the Wiki entry.

I doubt that someone like present-day cop killer Micah X. Johnson espoused leftist thought quite so openly; the influence of the left is probably more subtle but still very much present. Today’s proliferation of social media has its place, too, fanning the flames of every injustice and perceived injustice and spreading the word (a good example is the spate of recent threats to kill police that have been disseminated though Twitter).

I expect to have more to say about all of this in the next few days, as more information comes out. But the phenomenon of racial attacks on police is not new, although the scope of this particular attack is larger. It’s not at all clear whether it will spark other attacks of the sort or not, and what the ultimate fallout will be. I can even imagine it might engender some sympathy for police and increased appreciation for what they do, but I do not think that’s the most likely result at all. I think the most likely result by far will be a worsening of the anger and fear on both sides, which has already increased to a dangerous level.

[NOTE: I had some trouble thinking of a title for this post. “Police shooting” immediately conjures up the opposite of what happened, implying a shooting by police. The phrase “shooting of police” was the best I could come up with, but I realize that even that might not make it clear (to Google, for example) that I’m referring to a situation in which it was the police officers who were shot.]

Several Dallas police officers injured during demonstration against recent shootings by police

The New Neo Posted on by

Breaking news: At least two police officers have been shot at a rally to “show solidarity for communities affected by officer-involved shootings this week in Louisiana and Minnesota.”

There’s very little news on the condition of the officers. I’m reading and hearing that there have been two officers wounded, but some reports say up to six, and that police are now negotiating with what is described as “a second shooter” or perhaps the original suspect. The protest had apparently been peaceful until the shooting occurred.

In breaking stories there is always a lot of confusion, so I expect there will be significant updates and changes.

UPDATE 11:30 PM

It has been announced that three officers (two police officers and one National Guard) [correction: I heard “Guard” but announcers were actually saying “DART” which I believe means Dallas Area Rapid Transit] were killed and seven more were seriously injured, three in critical condition. The shootings were a sniper type affair, from a height. I’m hearing this on Fox News.

They seem to be apprehending a suspect, or what looks like a suspect or possible suspect.

The original killings (in Louisiana and Minnesota) that the crowd was protesting are still in the process of being investigated. Both seem to involve black men killed by white officers, and although in both cases we do not yet know what actually happened, there is a real possibility of what would be a very troubling pattern of police shooting people with undrawn weapons. I hadn’t written about either of these cases yet because (recalling all the complicated situations in the past where the initial reports ended up being very misleading) I was waiting for more definitive facts to come out.

UPDATE 7/8 12:02 AM

The Dallas police chief says there were 11 officers shot. Two police officers have died as well as one transit officer, and one civilian was also wounded. A suspect is “trapped” in an undisclosed location.

UPDATE 12:45 AM

Police have now reported that a fourth officer has died, and that both suspects are in custody. There is also a “suspicious device” or package that the bomb squad is now investigating.

Some of the officers were shot in the back (recalling for me this terrible killing).

There is little doubt that the perpetrators wished to sow chaos, fear, and racial hatred. There is also little doubt they were aiming to pick off police officers but that they were also firing into a huge crowd of civilians and were willing to kill some of them if need be.

UPDATE 1:35 AM

Police Chief Brown says negotiations are ongoing with a suspect on the second floor of a parking garage who has been sporadically exchanging gunfire with police and threatening that there are many bombs around town set to go off. Police are investigating those claims. There are also several more suspects in custody, two males who were apprehended in a car, as well as one female.

So, what about Part II?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote Part I of a post in which I said I’d be putting up Part II today, which would be a brief review of some cases relevant to the Clinton email case (or non-case, at this point).

I still plan to polish up that post and get it out there soon, maybe tomorrow. But not today.

FBI director James Comey’s testimony today, which I wrote about here, makes me feel that listing the cases is futile, although interesting. Why bother? Why bother to argue logically, as Trey Gowdy did so brilliantly in the video of the hearing that I displayed in today’s previous post? Logic and reason only matter if the American people are predisposed to hear them and care about them. That’s always been an iffy proposition in any population, but right now it’s at an ebb lower in this country than at any point I can ever remember in my lifetime.

The archaic FBI: why it neither tapes nor transcribes interviews [see UPDATE]

The New Neo Posted on by

[See UPDATE below.]

To most people (and I include myself) the news that the FBI neither taped nor even transcribed its interview with Hillary Clinton is quite shocking. Nor was she under oath, although that’s not as important since it’s already a crime to lie to the FBI.

But if it’s a crime to lie to the FBI, how would that get proven? Especially when you learn that the FBI almost never tapes or even transcribes such interviews except in a few extraordinary circumstances. I maintain that their interview with the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party about possible crimes she committed ought to have qualified as an extraordinary circumstance (let’s hope it’s not a trend). But apparently the FBI disagreed.

Here’s the way the FBI usually operates (from an article written five years ago):

…FBI practice limits the taping of interviews or confessions. The FBI’s insistence on using analog technology in a digital age has long stirred controversy in courtrooms across the country…

FBI procedure calls for agents to take notes during interviews and use them as the basis for a typewritten summary report, called a form 302. These 302s become exhibits at trial. Along with an agent’s own testimony, they serve as the primary record of an interviewee’s statement.

Because the substance of the reports is so important — and because the reports are inherently subjective — defense lawyers often seek to pick them apart. putting the agent on the defensive. This is particularly the case when defendants are charged with obstruction or lying to FBI agents…

The FBI’s policy allows for statements to be recorded on a limited, highly selective basis; such recordings must have prior approval from bureau chiefs. Former agents say this is extremely rare…

Those in favor of the current FBI approach to audiotapes allege that any blanket, one-size-fits-all policy would be a logistical nightmare for the already-taxed agency. Furthermore, recordings could reveal FBI interview tactics or strategies.

I don’t really have to explain why this policy is so problematic in the Clinton case. It relies on trust of the FBI agents involved, including trust of the accuracy and completeness of their note-taking, as well as their freedom from bias. There’s no reason at this point to trust those things, I’m sorry to say. It also seems problematic in general, not just when interviewing someone a powerful as Clinton, although the stakes are higher with Clinton.

However, in the quick Googling I just did since I learned about all of this, I can’t find much more about current policy on the subject. If anyone can add to what I’ve written, feel free, and please give links.

UPDATE:

I found a more recent article (May 2014) that mentioned a new directive for recording FBI interviews with suspects:

Under a new policy announced Thursday by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., federal agents investigating drug and gun crimes, as well as the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI, will videotape or audiotape suspects starting July 11. The interviews will be recorded between the arrest and first appearance in federal court.

For years, FBI agents have been criticized by defense lawyers in criminal trials for testifying about interviews based on recollections gleaned from scribbled notes.

The new directive was apparently triggered by the Tsarnaev case, where the suspect:

…was quizzed for hours by agents after his capture last year. Partly because of that process, Tsarnaev’s lawyers have asked a federal judge to throw out everything he said before the case goes to trial in November.

Eric Holder added the following at the time the new directive was announced:

“Creating an electronic record will ensure that we have an objective account of key investigations and interactions with people who are held in federal custody,” he said. “It will allow us to document that detained individuals are afforded their constitutionally protected rights.”

Equally important, he said, the new policy will be a “backstop” to ensure that federal agents have “clear and indisputable records of important statements and confessions made by individuals who have been detained.”

The reason I italicized the word “suspects” is that it is a limiting factor, and therefore I am assuming that by the time Hillary Clinton was being interviewed by the FBI she was no longer a “suspect” (if indeed she ever had been), and she certainly was not under arrest or “held in federal custody.” However, when the directive was first issued, this additional suggestion was made:

“This policy also encourages agents and prosecutors to consider electronic recording in investigative or other circumstances where the presumption does not apply,” such as in the questioning of witnesses.

So it seems they certainly might have videotaped or otherwise recorded her, but chose not to do so. There is also the possibility that Clinton had them agree to not record or otherwise transcribe her interview as a condition for her speaking to them.

[ADDENDUM: See also this.]

Comey’s testimony before the House: looking-glass world

The New Neo Posted on by

First of all: forgive me, but I haven’t watched it. My excuse (besides the usual “busy doing other things earlier today”) is that at this point it’s hard to stomach much more of this.

I never expected Hillary to be indicted, ever. But the combination of so many offenses and so little accountability is sobering, as I watch the prospect I’ve been dreading for four years (of the Hillary presidency I predicted in December of 2012) drawing closer and closer.

That’s the only prospect that could ever get me to consider voting for a person like Donald Trump, and to also feel a sort of weirdly paradoxical fear at the thought that—as much as I detest him—he will lose and she will win.

Anyway, that’s the background. The foreground is the Comey testimony today. One point that appears to have emerged from the hearing is why Comey kept talking about “intent” when intent is not part of the statute: it seems he thinks it should be part of the statute. Whether or not he thinks that, and whether or not he is correct in thinking that, seems to me to be irrelevant. Are we now at the point where every legal official is a mini-legislature, or a mini-SCOTUS, either rewriting a statute or saying it’s legally invalid for some reason or other? Andrew McCarthy discusses why Comey’s contention is absurd, but it doesn’t take a lawyer and a great legal mind to understand the danger here.

What’s more as, this video shows, intent could easily be inferred from Clinton’s actions. In fact, it’s far more difficult to imagine there was no intent than to imagine there was. And intent could probably have been proven (not that it was required to do so; it explicitly was not required to do so under this statute):

Another revelation—more shocking than the others, at least to anyone who may have still believed in the intelligence and integrity of the FBI—is that when Hillary Clinton was finally interviewed, she was neither put under oath nor recorded nor does a transcript exist of her testimony.

Let that sink in for a moment: there is no record of it. Moreover:

Mr. Comey said it’s still a crime if she lied to his agents ”” though he said he doesn’t believe that happened.

Republicans have called for the FBI’s interview with Mrs. Clinton to be released so her public defense of her secret email system can be stacked up with what she told agents. But Mr. Comey said no transcript exists…

He indicated they did see evidence that foreign governments tried to gain access to Mrs. Clinton’s server, though it’s impossible to know whether they succeeded. He said they didn’t find definitive evidence one way or the other.

Mr. Comey also said Mrs. Clinton agreed to make herself available for the interview on Saturday, which lasted three and a half hours, and involved about a half-dozen agents. Mr. Comey said he was not there.

What else is there to say after that, expect “what difference at this point does it make?” As I wrote over a year ago:

One thing of which I’m fairly sure, though, is that most of Hillary’s supporters would support her no matter what and are not at all interested in this story whatever it may end up revealing. What’s more, if somehow Clinton is not nominated next year by the Democratic Party (although I continue to think she will be), they will vote for whoever is nominated.

So my answer to the question “what difference does it make?” is “None.” Actually, I’ll revise that to say that perhaps the only difference it makes is that it serves to further a deepen the cynicism among the American public about politicians and the way they function. Increasingly, they are all seen by growing numbers of voters as corrupt liars, and the only choice is the choice of which liar is more likely to help that voter’s particular interest group and give it more benefits.

I’m sorry to feel the degree of cynicism I now feel, and have felt for a long time. Each incident grows that cynicism a bit more, but it already had reached a fairly high level even before yesterday and today.

I also try to retain hope. There are black swans, and some are to the good.

Case studies Part I: why the Comey announcement was so shocking

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a curious thing that yesterday’s Comey statement was shocking even though it was fully expected by the vast majority of people on the right. Although we didn’t know exactly how Comey was going to wriggle out of recommending an indictment for Hillary, we knew he probably would. But I think that, had anyone previously thought to carefully poll those who felt this way on the question of their predictions on how it would be done, the vast majority would have said they expected Comey to state that the elements of the crime weren’t there, nothing more to see, move along now.

Instead he delivered a decision with a split personality that made almost no sense to most people. To attempt to parse it is to risk getting a headache, and not just a metaphorical one. The elements of the crime were there, but nevertheless he’s not going to prosecute because…because…most people wouldn’t. Or maybe because some elements were missing that weren’t even required as part of the crime. Or because “similar” cases haven’t been prosecuted, but what those similar cases might be he didn’t see fit to tell us.

To many listeners (and not just those on the right; some Bernie supporters feel this way, too) the Comey speech seemed like blatant hypocrisy, or blatant admission of a judgment that is arbitrary and/or political. It was as though the Supreme Court had handed down a verdict “because we feel like it” or “because we say so.” It wasn’t just that so many listeners didn’t agree with the decision, it’s that Comey’s explanation for it seemed to make no sense.

That was the surprise; the failure to demonstrate an internal consistency/logic in giving reasons for the decision. It was as though Comey either couldn’t be bothered, or wracked his brain to come up with something that sounded good but even his brilliant mind couldn’t quite manage it. He did pretty well in the initial parts, the longer ones he labeled: “what we have done,” and “what we have found.” The fade occurred towards the end, in the much shorter (and yet very important) section “our recommendation to the Department of Justice.”

As David French writes:

Tuesday morning, FBI Director James Comey stepped up to a podium and calmly and methodically demolished every single Hillary Clinton lie, spin, and evasion regarding her misuse of classified information. Months of deception blew up in her face. And then Comey decided to make her president of the United States. Rarely have 30 minutes of television so perfectly encapsulated the decline and fall of the rule of law and the extraordinary privileges enjoyed by America’s liberal elite. After listing abuse after abuse ”” and detailing lie after lie ”” Comey declared that “no reasonable prosecutor” would prosecute Hillary for her obvious and manifest crimes.

I had been trying to avoid writing about this story again today. But I keep gnawing at it, like a dog on an especially tough and gristly bone. And one thing that struck me after a while about that last section is the fact that Comey didn’t cite a single case in his statement. After all, he wrote:

In looking back at our [other] 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 [previously] 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.

So it would be extremely helpful to know what cases the FBI has prosecuted involving “mishandling or removal of classified information” under this same statute? Names? Fact situations? Not that it actually matters, because failure to enforce the law in the past doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be enforced now (and Comey made it clear that he retained the right to enforce it in the future). But it makes sense for Comey to let us know which possibly-analogous cases were prosecuted, and even more interestingly, what were the similar cases that were investigated and not prosecuted despite the fact that (as with Hillary Clinton’s use of her server for classified information) they met the elements of the crime as written in the statute. How similar were they?

In other words, please let us poor peons know what you’re talking about. Are there actually cases with similar fact situations, where a Secretary of State or a high-up person similarly trusted with sensitive information decided to set up an entire parallel system to circumvent the secure systems already in place? And it should be a person close enough in time to what happened with Hillary that he or she would be subject to the same rules and regulations concerning an email system in this current age of widespread hacking, terrorism, and the like.

And then if you could be so kind as to tell us the situations in which the FBI investigated such persons, found the elements of the crime present, and dropped the prosecution—well, that would be good to know, too. And let us know exactly what statutes were involved in those investigations because—as of course you are fully aware—there are other statutes that require intent as an element of the crime and some statutes (such as one involved in the Hillary investigation) that do not.

[NOTE: In part II tomorrow, I will offer a summary of the cases that I did find, and what they seem to reveal.]

[ADDENDUM: You might also want to take a look at the AP’s list of false claims Hillary Clinton made about the emails that have “collapsed” as a result of the FBI investigation. Interesting indeed, and not the least because the AP is usually biased to the left side of things. Another relevant article is this one involving Comey’s prosecution of Frank Quattrone:

Quattrone found himself in Comey’s crosshairs and was subject to one of the most frivolous criminal prosecutions in the last twenty years. Comey presided over the decision to indict Quattrone for what was, essentially, an email directing people in his company to comply with a subpoena request.]

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

Bot who seems unfamiliar with one of the internet’s favorite topics:

Yes! Finally someone writes about boob.

Finally??

By the way, the post on which the above spam comment appeared was about George Orwell.