Octopus Overlords

Saturday on CNN while discussing the FBI reopening the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private unsecured email server during her tenure as secretary of state, former Assistant Director of the FBI Thomas Fuentes said, “The FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation.”

He added, “The FBI made the determination that the investigation would go forward as a comprehensive unified case and be coordinated, so that investigation is ongoing and Huma Abedin and her role and activities concerning secretary of state in the nature of the foundation and possible pay to play, that’s still being looked at and now.”

malchior wrote:And that above illustrates how out of control the FBI is. The FBI has a policy about commenting on ongoing investigations including that an investigation even exists generally. The DOJ has policies about releasing information or indictments in the 60 days proceeding an election.

Yet here they are breaking all the rules for god knows what reasons. They are acting politically (unintentionally or not) which is bad. We can point at all the reasons why this is the case; however when it is in one tribes favor it gets a pass from either side. That is unawesome. It is an accelerating breakdown of the system and people are literally celebrating it. Sad.

Smutly wrote: Not sure it's of any solace, but apparently there is a stack of resignations on Comey's desk. Way to fuck up the Bureau, Comey.

gilraen wrote:

Smutly wrote: Not sure it's of any solace, but apparently there is a stack of resignations on Comey's desk. Way to fuck up the Bureau, Comey.

I haven't been watching the news today, but if that's true, I'm not surprised. I fully expect Comey to resign within the next 6 months.

Defiant wrote:Volokh Conspiracy is saying there may be Fourth Amendment problems in what the FBI is doing

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re FBI director James Comey?

It’s 11 days before the most contentious, divisive, brutal election in US history.

Your department has been working for weeks on an investigation into criminal allegations surrounding a DailyMail.com scoop about Anthony Weiner sexting a 15-year-old girl.

They report to you that during the investigation, they have discovered a laptop containing over 650,000 emails.

It was a laptop shared between Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s right hand woman.

An inspection of the metadata of that laptop suggests ‘thousands’ of those emails were to and from Clinton’s now infamous private email server, some possibly containing classified information.

But you can’t read those emails without a warrant and if you seek that warrant, it will inevitably leak to the media.

What, if you’re Mr Comey, do you do?

After all, he told Congress he would alert them to any development which gave him good cause to reopen the original investigation into Clinton’s emails.

This, by any yardstick, was surely such a development?

Comey therefore had two choices.

He either waited until after the election next Tuesday before saying anything.

Or, he alerted Congress immediately.

Either way, public opprobrium lay.

If he waited, and Hillary won, and then it transpired there was stuff on this laptop which materially changes the findings of the original FBI investigation, all hell would have broken loose.

Donald Trump, already raging at a ‘rigged system’, would have exploded with fury and this time with very good reason.

The media, too, would have crucified both Comey and Clinton.

America’s new President would thus be instantly mired in a massive scandal of potentially impeachable proportions.

So instead, Comey went public with the information by writing to Congress revealing the existence of the laptop and the potential link to Clinton’s private email server.

But how can anyone in a neutral political position not judge that they must be investigated, nor that they ‘seem pertinent’ to the original investigation?

How can anything be more ‘pertinent’ than the emergence of a new electronic device appearing to contain thousands of emails between Hillary and Huma, using the very private server that caused all the trouble in the first place?

So I don’t blame Comey at all. He had no choice.

When it comes to the blame game, I would suggest there are three people a lot more culpable.

First, Huma Abedin for not informing the FBI about this laptop during the original investigation. She apparently claims she didn’t know any of her emails were on it. Really? Well how the hell did they get there then?

Ms Abedin has very serious questions to answer here and if she has deliberately suppressed materially relevant evidence from the FBI then she could face very serious CRIMINAL questions.

Second, former president Bill Clinton for that ridiculous stunt he pulled on Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a private airstrip in Phoenix days before Comey’s verdict into the original investigation. What on earth was he thinking compromising the integrity of the investigation in that way? People can make their own minds up but it stinks. The result of it, though, was that Lynch effectively recused herself from the investigation, handing full responsibility to Comey. If she hadn’t been forced to do that, then we may not be in this new situation.

But ultimately, the person most to blame for all this is Hillary Clinton.

She’s the one who deliberately set up a private email server while she was Secretary of State in flagrant breach of the rules of government email usage.

She’s the one who exchanged classified information in those emails. She’s the one who, when the balloon of this scandal went up, then deleted 33,000 of those emails, raising a huge cloud of suspicion over what they contained.

She’s the one who misled everyone repeatedly whenever she talked about this scandal.

Hillary Clinton made her secret email bed and she lied in it.

Now she is paying the consequences and it may cost her the White House.

She’s the one to blame not James Comey.

Carpet_pissr wrote:"Comey therefore had two choices. He either waited until after the election next Tuesday before saying anything. Or, he alerted Congress immediately."

Someone needs to look up the definition of 'immediately'.

An inspection of the metadata of that laptop suggests ‘thousands’ of those emails were to and from Clinton’s now infamous private email server, some possibly containing classified information.

But you can’t read those emails without a warrant and if you seek that warrant, it will inevitably leak to the media.

What, if you’re Mr Comey, do you do?

killbot737 wrote:One of the Hillary PACs is blitzing an ad here of lots of deplorable things Trump has said on the campaign trail.

If you haven't been paying any attention to politics until now I imagine it could be super effective. Possibly over 9000.

El Guapo wrote:

killbot737 wrote:One of the Hillary PACs is blitzing an ad here of lots of deplorable things Trump has said on the campaign trail.

If you haven't been paying any attention to politics until now I imagine it could be super effective. Possibly over 9000.

I would hope.

killbot737 wrote:One of the Hillary PACs is blitzing an ad here of lots of deplorable things Drumpf has said on the campaign trail.

If you haven't been paying any attention to politics until now I imagine it could be super effective. Possibly over 9000.

'We don't operate on innuendo'

as a young girl, I became very interested and enamored of the Yankees.

Rip wrote:

@Hillary in NC telling people she has been a Cubs fan for life.



Flashback to 1998 when she told Couric.

as a young girl, I became very interested and enamored of the Yankees.

hepcat wrote:Now she just has 192 flips on previous statements before she catches up to Trump! Come on, Hillary!

malchior wrote:The FBI is also leaking information around this issue like crazy right now. Sometimes idealism isn't the best course and he is in many ways too rigid and then goes off track without warning. Possibly the worst combination of traits possible for that job.

Alefroth wrote:

hepcat wrote:Now she just has 192 flips on previous statements before she catches up to Trump! Come on, Hillary!

How is it a flop? She can't be a fan of two teams?

GreenGoo wrote:Who gives a flying fuck what sports ball team she enthuses after?

THIS is the kind of stuff that counts as "mud" against her?

I have no words for people who pick the leader of the free world based on which team she likes.

Here's a hint. She doesn't give 2 craps on a cracker about any team. She's too busy being locked in a room filled with hostile congressmen for 12 hours at a time.

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.

U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic, some of the sources who had knowledge of that discussion said.

In the letter identified as fake, Carper is quoted as writing to Clinton, “We will not let you lose this election,” a person who saw the document told Reuters.

The fake Carper letter, which was described to Reuters, is one of several documents presented to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice for review in recent weeks, the sources said.

Smutly wrote:This baseball fandom innuendo and tomfoolery is obviously Russian interference in our electoral process! Evidence people! Evidence!

Smutly wrote:This baseball fandom innuendo and tomfoolery is obviously Russian interference in our electoral process! Evidence people! Evidence!

Whether or not the FBI finds any previously unidentified messages containing classified material, the discovery reminded everyone of Clinton’s tendency to pile lie upon lie instead of coming clean about her mistakes.

“I’m not making excuses,” Clinton said at a rally in Ohio on Monday. “I’ve said it was a mistake, and I regret it.”

Clinton didn’t manage to describe what Comey later called her “extremely careless” handling of “very sensitive, highly classified information” as a mistake until six months after The New York Times revealed her reliance on a personal e-mail system during her tenure at the State Department. Until that interview, she did nothing but make excuses, and even afterward she continued to offer false assurances aimed at minimizing her misbehavior.

Clinton claimed that “what I did was allowed,” that she “fully complied with every rule,” that “there is no classified material” in the e-mails she sent and received and that she “went above and beyond what I was requested to do.”

She also said she “opted for convenience to use my personal e-mail account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal e-mails instead of two.”

As investigations by the State Department’s inspector general and the FBI later showed, none of that was true.

Clinton did not comply with every rule, she did not turn over all her work-related e-mail to the State Department or do so in a timely fashion, the e-mail did include classified material, her use of a private account was contrary to State Department policy and she carried multiple devices despite saying she sought to avoid them.

Notwithstanding these manifest misrepresentations, Clinton falsely claimed Comey had verified the truthfulness of her public statements about the e-mail controversy when he said he didn’t have any basis to charge her with lying to the FBI. Then she said that whopper was based on a misunderstanding, which clearly wasn’t true. In other words, she lied about lying about her lies.

Rip wrote:

@Hillary in NC telling people she has been a Cubs fan for life.



Flashback to 1998 when she told Couric.

as a young girl, I became very interested and enamored of the Yankees.