FBI Director James Comey hasn’t even gotten a warrant to read the possibly-related-to-Hillary-possibly-not emails in question, yet he’s already gone running to Congressional Republicans to talk about them. Comey’s actions directly contradicted Justice Department policy and the advice of his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Hillary Clinton has done exactly the right thing by calling for the FBI to correct Comey’s screw-up by immediately release everything it knows. Guilty people don’t do that!
But the rest of us need to go a step further. Can you imagine if a Democratic president’s FBI director did this to the Republican presidential candidate only 11 days before the election? The Republican candidate would be calling for the FBI director’s immediate resignation, and that’s exactly what Democrats should be doing today.
Some journalists are trying to claim Comey had no good choice here – that Democrats are mad he told Republicans about emails he hasn’t read yet, but that Republicans would’ve been mad if he’d stayed quiet. This is totally false. Comey had policy to guide him: Don’t discuss cases in public. Comey chose to break that policy 11 days before an election with information he knew his fellow Republicans would use for partisan political purposes against the Democratic presidential candidate. “Republicans would’ve been mad Comey didn’t break policy to fuel partisan attacks” is not a reason to break policy.
Two former deputy attorneys general – one Democratic, one Republican – write in the Washington Post that Comey is damaging our democracy:
As former deputy attorneys general in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, we are troubled by the apparent departure from these standards in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. First, the FBI director, James B. Comey, put himself enthusiastically forward as the arbiter of not only whether to prosecute a criminal case — which is not the job of the FBI — but also best practices in the handling of email and other matters. Now, he has chosen personally to restrike the balance between transparency and fairness, departing from the department’s traditions. As former deputy attorney general George Terwilliger aptly put it, “There’s a difference between being independent and flying solo.”
As former Justice Department official Matthew Miller writes in the Washington Post, Comey’s “conduct that raises serious questions about his judgment and ability to serve as the nation’s chief investigative official.” (UPDATE: Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer in George W. Bush’s White House, has filed a Hatch Act complaint against the FBI.)
Comey is a Republican who donated to John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. But today we’re supposed to believe he’s impartial here? The original sin here is President Obama handing the FBI to a Republican. Now Obama and Clinton can’t call on Comey to resign – but that doesn’t mean we as Democrats can’t do it for them.
The Hillary Clinton email “scandal” has been a partisan witch hunt from the start. Even people who think it’s a scandal can’t actually explain it.
Clinton and her campaign didn’t do themselves any favors by spending months responding with feckless attempts to prove they’re still Very Serious People by accepting blame. Here’s a shorter version of dozens of cable news segments I watched this summer:
REPUBLICAN: Hillary Clinton’s emails are a horrible scandal that shows she should never be president
DEMOCRAT: (winces) Ooh, yeah, our bad, sorry, can we talk about something else?
When you’re a lifelong Democratic insider like Ed Rendell, you can’t just go telling the host they’re full of it! You need to play nice so you keep getting invited back on TV to keep your brand current! This has stood in especially stark contrast to Trump’s surrogates, who will simply tell the host they’re a partisan hack, reject the premise of the questions, and start talking about something else entirely.
Democrats could take a lesson! We don’t need to attack the media or our institutions as a whole – but can point out this story is totally bogus, the media’s Clinton Rules are a real thing, and that Clinton’s Republican opponent has a pile of real live wrongdoing that’s a mile high and a million times more crystal clear than anything with which Republicans are trying to smear Hillary.
As Bernie Sanders said over a year ago now, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” Democrats have never had more evidence on their side to echo Bernie every chance they get.
“Will round-the-clock wild speculation about emails hurt Hillary’s campaign? After the break our panel will wildly speculate.”
The rabid right is going to lose its mind, whatever it has left after eight years of a black man in the White House……
Just look at my in laws home country.
….but the Republican would be worse!
The rallying cry of the Democratic Party.
judgments, but there were non-political reasons for doing so. It starts with his announcement this summer:
This led to Comey testifying in front of Congress and releasing a bunch of documents that he shouldn’t have:
Due to that testimony, he felt compelled to make the most recent addendum:
“I’ve generally been a big Comey fan, but I’m appalled at what’s happened here.” http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/must-read–36
I lean toward honest mistake. I think he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t want to be accused of covering up for her. That said it does seem pretty clear that he should have consulted more people.
Surely even HRC recognizes the irony of her campaign calling for transparency.
Again: “Republicans would be mad at me if I didn’t” is not a valid excuse for breaking policy.
But that’s not what I said. I think he thought he was caught between two bad choices.
I have no idea really … but if he wanted to destroy Hillary, he could have indicted her months ago. He didn’t.
That he didn’t issue an unjustified indictment isn’t a sign he’s nonpartisan.
I’ll never learn.
No ham sandwich to see here.
.
… that the user known as ‘jimc’ rented all the “Police Academy” movies from Blockbuster… and never returned them. How some pirated copies of the ‘Police Academy” movies later ended up in North Korea is a question I’d like answered… And, if jimc can’t answer those questions, I’m going to keep asking, implying that he’s hiding something.
Further, I know that “JimC” is not his real name. His real name is James… James C… Hmm..
Why the lack of transparency Mr “James C”… omey, oh my??
Before you get all ticked-off jimc, I’m just having some fun with you, but with a point: This whole email thing is no different than Whitewater… a incomprehensible narrative with vaguely sinister-seeming elements that nobody can decently explain or decipher kept alive both by repeated questions that, actually, nobody could possibly answer and an a priori belief in the motives of the accused.. The same is true for Travelgate, Rose Law fIrm records, HealthCare reform meetings, Cattle Futures, Vince Foster, Benghazi, etc…
I just made a ridiculous accusation about your Blockbuster membership and insinuated nefarious ties to North Korea as well as the imputation that you are an alias for the director of the FBI. They are absurd accusations… and you have every reason to disbelieve them. But you’d probably get very very upset and stop speaking to me if I continued to make them, especially if i continued in the face of the fact that they only superficially make any kind of sense, at all. So, to blame the target of repeated lies, misprisions, absurd insinuations and ridiculous calumnies for being defensive and ‘lacking transparency’ is an absurdity unto itself, since you’d likely do the same under those circumstances. Hillary Clinton’s guilt or innocence is not a function of Heisenberg’s principle and the Director of the FBI should not play dice with justice.
You’re tautologies are fun to follow, and eruditely argued, but they are often lacking in dealing with reality. The reality is, Hillary, scarred from partisan battles in the 1990s that are largely not her fault, decided to use other servers for her emails to avoid having them entered into the record. Ironically, as often happens with the Clintons, the instinct to consistently cover up and lie about these things ends up digging them deeper into dogshit.
I don’t care that Bill got his weed whacked, he could’ve just said that and salvaged his second term instead of having it wasted on bogus partisan impeachment proceedings. Sure, that’s on the Republicans. So is overplaying Benghazi (which was an intel failure that killed five Americans, instead of Iraq which was an intel riskier that killed five thousand and wrecked our foreign policy for a generation). But emailgate is a great example of how they try to be too clever by half and mislead or cover up from their enemies. And then their enemies make the cover up the crime.
Nothing in Wikileaks or emailgate shows anything out of the ordinary for a policy figure of her stature. And wonks like us can sift through them and see there isn’t any “there” there. But the average voter just sees a pattern of the Clintons getting cornered and covering up and bunkering down instead of being honest and transparent and moving on.
All she needed to say was “I wanted my private emails to remain private, as I suspect most Americans do. I made a mistake in trying to protect my privacy and I apologize to the American people. I will not make a mistake like this as President and will always be transparent and honest with the American people. The buck stops here, and it continue to stop here if I’m President”.
I’ve never seen that direct, straightforward and heartfelt apology from her. Just allusions to mistakes and bad judgment, and harsh attacks against those conducting the investigations. Attacking the FBI Director and calling for his head is not the way out of this, it’s what Trump does when he attacks judges who rule against him. At least that’s what our media will portray it as the equivalent of. And since we can’t change that in two weeks, and we know what the narrative will be, she has a golden opportunity to rise above this and be presidential. Let’s see if she turns this lemon into lemonade.
… ‘eruditely’. Yuck. “argued with erudition” is much better. And I don’t think you understand what ‘tautologies’ mean. I pointed out, perhaps in a rather more long winded way than your comfort allows, that I don’t think jimc, were he in Hillary Clintons position, would act very much differently than she has. I think the same is true for you and I. Therefore his (continued) efforts to book her for her deeds are more suspect than her deeds. That you want to pivot off this to re-litigate the email scandal, which you can’t decently explain either, is an indication you, also, don’t get it.
To answer your question: no, I was not a philosophy major.
Please note: I answered your question straightforwardly and honestly, adding nothing about my majors in college or anything about any independent reading in metaphysics, rhetoric and logic I may have done. You now have a choice. You can say I answered your question and have done or you can accuse me of a lack of transparency for not revealing my major of my experience with philosophy. Which is it? The answer to that question is where this conversation, and not I, diverges from ‘reality’.
I think Hillary wanted to protect her privacy and did so, in a way any of us would’ve done, but-she’s not an ordinary person but a public official. She violated official State Department policy about taking sensitive electronic communications off site.
Stating definitively that she violated that policy, she did it for what she felt were good reasons at the time, but that she now realizes those reasons didnt justify the action and that she won’t do it again will do a lot to end this issue. Definitively. Instead we get evasions, we get half apologies “I should’ve exercised more caution”, and the “everybody does it” defense (Powell and Rice used off site servers too!).
Deflategate was dumb, had Brady said “I deflated the balls and I’m sorry” he would’ve gotten a two week suspension and we could’ve all moved on. Monicagate was over nothing, but had Clinton said that “I did have sexual relations with that woman and I apologize” he would’ve saved himself and the country a lot of grief. He ended up saying that anyway, after an impeachment and a hundred million dollar investigation.
I’m not arguing the controversy isn’t overblown and politicized, I am arguing that the Clintons by always covering up first and being hostile to transparency make the controversy more overblown and more politicized than it needs to be, to their detriment.
As I said above, I doubt this moves the needle much for Trump. But it definitely helps Ayotte, Blunt, Toomey, Johnson, and Young and those are five seats I’d rather win than lose. Hillary should want to win them too, especially if she wants to govern at all. Trump is unacceptable to a broad majority of Americans, but her actions make the “check on Hillary” argument more potent than it should be.
…my understanding is that she used a private server in part because she wanted something MORE secure than the State Department offered and was turned down.
HRC created this situation by using a private server, which (by her account) was to create an extra layer of privacy. In other words … less transparency.
I’ll grant you that her recent statements are somewhat consistent with her campaign urging the FBI to complete its review before the election, but asking them to discuss an ongoing investigation publicly is a bit strange.
But don’t take my word that she doesn’t like transparency. Ask David Axelrod.
where without any evidence Comey sent a letter to Republicans in Congress. That doesn’t make sense.
If Comey did have information then yes, he should let them know that the case is reopened. But as we all now know, on Friday when he sent out the letter no one view any emails nor did they have any knowledge that there was anything new.
…Actually, no. By her account she wanted to use one handheld and one only.
Your account of her account is a guess at motives. My point, exactly.
Have you not been attending? Am I interrupting an argument you are having with someone else? I’m the one saying her apparent dislike of transparency is a completely predictable outcome of thirty years of nasty attacks. Contained within that argument is the stipulation that she doesn’t like the sort of transparency that is required of her (but not of others…) You want to litigate whether or no she likes transparency… but I stipulate that she doesn’t already.
And why should she? a confusing swirl of innuendo and accusations that resists clarity is not going to be dispelled with transparency on her part… How could it? Thirty years of it, one after the other, ceaselessly, baselessly and continuously. When Ken Starr got clarity on Whitewater he moved seamlessly on to other things until he caught Bill Clinton with his pants down.
When the Congress (seven times) got clarity on Benghazi, and after a marathon eleven hours of hearing was Secretary Clinton left alone? Nope. She should have been publicly exonerated. Was she?
Look — over there!! Emails!
Oh, that didn’t turn out to be very much…
Look — over there!! The Clinton Foundation!
What’s that you say? Nothing to that eith–
Look — over there!! MORE Emails!
But for the record, it’s a gross misreading of everything I’ve been saying. I strongly object.
I’ve been absolutely consistent on this. The whole thing is a self-inflicted wound, and (as no less an authority than David Axelrod observed) completely in character for HRC.
It’s also been a great example of Murphy’s Law. Anything that could go wrong with her poor decision has gone wrong, and it’s not my fault that it keeps happening. It is hers, and hers alone.
If you guys don’t want to talk about it, fine. But don’t tell the rest of us to STFU.
Far shorter and better put than anything I’ve written on this subject. Well done.
n/t
The “self-inflicted wound” was the decision to use a private email server. That was discovered and investigated ad nauseam years ago.
What we are discussing here is only tangentially related to that self-inflicted wound. We are discussing emails found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, a laptop that was improperly shared with his wife, Ms. Abedin. Are you suggesting that Ms. Clinton somehow instructed Ms. Abedin to use her husband’s computer? Are you suggesting that Ms. Clinton should have somehow learned about and ended Ms. Abedin’s improper use of her husband’s laptop?
It seems to me that your passionate desire to attack Ms. Clinton overwhelms the facts of the case.
Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with any of this. Whatever emails are ultimately found on that laptop would be the same whatever server Ms. Clinton had used.
The point here is that this disclosure by Mr. Comey was grossly inappropriate and flagrantly political. Numerous former Attorney’s General have said that. Mr. Comey himself chose to avoid participating in the disclosure of information about Russian cyberattacks citing the same 60-day prohibition that should have applied here.
You are focused on Hillary Clinton, and this issue is only tangentially related to her. This appears to be a flagrant violation of the Hatch act, and the appropriate focus is on Mr. Comey and his decision.
And it has come under attack. I object.
I think your focus on Ms. Clinton in all this is mistaken and incorrect. I don’t in any way intend that as an attack on your integrity. All of us make mistakes, and each of us has our perception of what is and is not important.
Perhaps it will turn out that some striking new smoking gun is revealed in these emails that will force Ms. Clinton to step aside or be indicted and convicted of some crime. In my view, the likelihood of that is vanishingly small. Still, strange things do happen from time to time.
In any case, I don’t challenge your integrity at all and I apologize if my words have given you a different impression.
Thank you.
Though who knows when Carlos Danger is involved.
… I do not attack your integrity. I think you have an honest dislike of Clinton and the sincere credulity of a fairly straightforward person. Unfortunately, both the dislike and the credulity align quite neatly with far far less benevolent, and entirely dishonest, motives on the right. I suppose this can be understood as an attack, by me, upon your credulity. I’m not sure what to say about that.
Thus do I affirm your integrity: In the context of lying liars and the lies they tell, the only thing keeping the lies alive is an honest man, such as yourself, repeating them with the entirely scrupulous desire to get to the bottom of it. That’s the perverted brilliance of the attacks: just enough substance and heft to get earnest participants to sign off on further investigations. It is a pattern long established and one particularly in use against the Clintons. It is irksome, to say the least, to see this pattern repeat and have you, however earnestly, turn it on Hillary Clinton for a purported lack of transparency. So I’m irked. But that’s not attack upon your integrity.
So that’s where we are at.
I have, and I would’ve gone to jail if I had taken it home and uploaded it onto a private server. Period. That is why I have been so dogged on insisting it was a severe mistake.
Was it illegal for her? Apparently not, but apparently this new evidence was sufficient enough to reopen the investigation. Were Comey’s actions appropriate? I am not sure, I’ve seen timelines from some legal scholars that say it was and others that say it wasn’t.
Would she have been in this situation if she had gone through the proper channels and gotten proper authorization to use this information? If she had maintained one server for classified material and one server for unclassified material like every other State Department employee is required by law to do? I think the answer is no. That is what JimC has been consistently arguing for months. And I believe you agreed with us before the first primary debate when you settled on Clinton as your candidate.
We are talking here about Ms. Abedin, not Ms. Clinton. Your first paragraph is therefore irrelevant. We are not talking about Ms. Clinton’s email server here.
Your last paragraph similarly misses the point. I think Mr. Weiner violated protocol by sharing his laptop with Ms. Abedin (he certainly violated the protocol of each of my employers). I think the email correspondence between Ms. Abedin and Ms. Clinton would be the same regardless of what server hosted Ms. Clinton’s email. I think this whole affair has only a tangential relationship to Ms. Clinton.
Pretty much all of us, including Ms. Clinton, have said months ago that her decision to use a private email server was a terrible lapse of judgement. It was. We’ve been over that ground countless times, and this adds nothing new at all.
That absence of new information is a key part of what makes this act so brazenly and improperly political.
She should suspend Abedin from the campaign and get ahead of this. She surrounds herself with people that don’t always have her interest at heart or put the interest of the campaign first. They enable politically risky behavior and then cover it up. Let’s have a No Drama administration.
She’s also probably the last person you can accuse of not having Hillary’s interest at heart. We have no idea what was in those emails and I tend to lean toward trusting people to be professional and know how to handle these things.
You are calling for the investigation to be halted and the principal to resign.
…but I do believe in innocent until proven guilty and Comey’s speculation and hinting isn’t helping that particular principle. I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that he was in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t position. It’s true that I don’t believe this is worth investigating, but if it must be investigated following procedure would be nice.
I thought it was his personal laptop? I assume Ms. Abedin also violated protocol by storing copies of her State department emails on a laptop shared with her husband.
The problem for Sec. Clinton is if some of those emails are classified or harmful to her and they had not already been handed over to the FBI because they were deleted off her server.
Government documents, including email, have no place on a personal machine. If that isn’t part of the protocol, it should be. If this was a personal machine, shared by the two of them, then that makes the situation even worse.
Whatever problems Ms. Clinton may or may not have, there is absolutely no reason for any of this to have been made public until the facts were known.
Well, yeah. She should have. She was skating close to the edge with her own uses, but not to have her aide’s use under control is simply reckless.
And I have had that job, and personal convenience for yourself is the last thing an aide needs to be concerned with. The boss always comes first.
… You say consistent. I say stubborn and blinkered, even mulish.
If it is a self-inflicted wound, it’s no more than a stubbed toe. Rarely fatal and usually only blown out of proportion in places like high schools and looney bins. That you desperately wish it to be more than a stubbed toe is about you more than about her.
Keep saying it’s about me, because that’s not annoying, offensive, and a great example of arguing in bad faith. The technical term is ad hominen.
Yes it’s about me because I’m the one who objected.
You may be pro-Clinton, as am I, but you’re pro-Clinton trolling.
HRC has plenty of enemies and the last thing her supporters should be doing is saying anything that even the slightest bit concedes they might have a point. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a self-inflicted wound; it’s not even a wound no matter how many congressional hearings try to make it one. She wanted to use the most secure possible server. Others had done similar things and it did not violate policy and certainly not law. Even HRC herself has gone further than I would have trying to “apologize” for her “mistake”.
I was willing to give Comey the benefit of the doubt until it came out that he didn’t even have a warrant to examine the benign (but maybe not! ScanDal!) emails he claimed to be looking at.
This isn’t law enforcement, it’s rumor-mongering by a cop.
…breaking news that the warrant has been procured.
The folks who think this is disqualifying were voting for Trump or a third party candidate anyway, her hard core supporters are outraged like Captain Renault, and for folks like me and JimC it’s the reason our noses are going to be held, no matter how much she has embraced the Sanders agenda or how qualified she is.
In any other election against any other candidate this repeated mentality of the Clinton campaign to cover up first and ask questions later would be anathema to a majority of voters and fatal in a general election. In fact, most polls show it is, but embracing the alternative is embracing a fascist future for our beloved country. And I still have faith a majority of Americans won’t do that.
Unless you are more into appearance than I have any patience with there is simply no there there. Are people trying the old game of must find some balance somewhere because they are so concerned about their own confirmation biases? The question comes down to Dangerous Unqualified Misogynistic Bigot vs. a woman who MAYBE (and probably not) mishandled a few emails. Even vs. a more conventional opponent who isn’t DUMB this is much ado about nothing, as it almost always is with the Clintons.
It as much ado about nothing, the actual “crime” isn’t a big deal but they consistently make things worse for themselves by covering up and deflecting rather than just taking personal responsibility and accountability for what was really an innocent mistake.
Like Benghazi, there are good arguments to be made that he State Department needs substantially better resources than it actually gets. What frustrates me as someone close to the Foreign Service through former colleagues is that their demands for better security and better funding fall on deaf ears. Hillary could be a drum major for those changes, instead she bashes State and her predecessors rather than taking initiative. It’s not a good look for her presidency, and I say this as a consistent supporter. We should be very worried that this behavior will continue and risk her presidency as much as it risked Bill’s. These own goals have to stop. They are utterly preventable.
1. Everytime email gate has flared up, Hillary’s lost about 5 points in the polls. Yes, it’s been temporary, but there’s less than 2 weeks for a recovery, if she drops that much again. (Hell, voting has started).
2. She doesn’t have time to defend herself against these unsubstantiated and almost certainly nothing claims.
3. Given that not even the FBI knows what’s in these emails – if anything new – how could Hillary even hope to have time to defend herself even if she had the time?
4. It’s not just about whether or not this would lose her support, it’s also about enthusiasm and turnout. This is revving up Trump’s supporters and may depress some of Hillary’s support. Not good.
This does matter. A lot. It absolutely could cost us the election, and could have nipped a huge Democratic wave in the bud.
I don’t think it could swing the election, but there’s no question that it matters.
It could swing a close election; this one (thank God) doesn’t seem to be close.
a few House and Senate seats though.
There was just a smidge of room for Trump to get through. Those people? Political idiots. (I don’t mean they’re not that bright, just that they don’t follow politics, and see voting like an onerous chore like folding laundry). They tend to make up their mind at the last second based on their last impression.
I’ve given up on Ohio and Florida. Never thought I’d be sitting here, thinking that North Carolina is the state the Dems need to (and may well) carry to win it.
Electoral-Vote has them tied today in OH and Clinton slightly ahead in FL, though it also has Clinton slightly up in ALASKA which I will believe when I see. 538 gives Trump a 55.4% chance to win OH, but Clinton a 54.6% of winning FL.
And they should be bullish on their candidate after this, but they are decidedly not.
I think the links Mark Bail below shed light on how Comey boxed himself into this no-win situation and the step by step look at what this does and doesn’t mean. I strongly disagree with the notion he is a partisan shill trying to rig this election for Trump, Harry Reid agreed with me back in June when he praised Comey’s handling of this case as neutral and non-partisan. I can certainly see that he does not have deft media or political skills and they are certainly undermining confidence in his leadership. But incompetence isn’t violating the law or trying to rig the game for Trump.
Literally the same partisan hacks on the left that were praising Comey in June are condemning him now, while the same partisan hacks on the right bashing him in June are praising him now. I think the truth is somewhere else entirely. He was too public and transparent in the past, which forced him to take this minor revelation to Congress which then used it for smearing purposes. And he should’ve anticipated this firestorm and apparently was caught entirely off guard by it. So this isn’t a good look for an FBI Director, but firing the guy investigating you is a worse look for President Clinton.
…finding a reason to criticize partisans on your own side. Really, what’s with the “own goals” you like to score? Surely you aren’t surprised as both sides are in fact being consistent. Her partisans believe there is nothing to the emails so of course they like it when Comey said there wasn’t enough wrongdoing to count and don’t like it when he suggests there is more to look at. Conversely, her detractors believe he should have more aggressively pursued the case against her and were thus disappointed when he didn’t, but encouraged to hear there may be more to investigate after all.
That’s my entire point. Reality based means accepting the reality that your candidates can be fallible and make mistakes, and it means accepting that their critics occasionally have a point. Do we want to be Karl Rove on election night saying Romney is still going to win are do we want to actually tell the truth and the look at the facts?
The facts are thus: the FBI concluded it’s investigation by saying she acted improperly but not illegally. It found new evidence that forced it to reopen the investigation. The timing and manner of the announcement was conducted in a politically tone deaf and inconsistent manner. I haven’t defended Comey on that.
What I will defend him from is the charge, presently baseless, that he is trying to throw this election to Donald Trump. That’s the same thing the Brietbart clowns said back in August, it was a lie then, and it’s a lie now. The difference is I expected BMG to be better.
Your second paragraph mis-states the facts as I understand them.
The FBI has known of this material for some weeks now — this is not “new evidence” (emphasis mine):
In my view, your characterization of the timing and manner of the announcement is far too gentle. It appears to be intentionally timed to hurt the Democratic party and Ms. Clinton.
That is not the same as “trying to throw this election to Donald Trump”. It strikes me as intended to make it more difficult for a Democratic landslide to regain a Senate and House majority.
We are not Breitbart clowns. I find it incredulous that anyone can look at this decision — especially in the context of Mr. Comey’s silence about Russian involvement with the election and even the Republican campaign — and NOT immediately conclude that its motivation is improperly partisan and political.
The truth has no partisan side. When someone acts in a flagrantly partisan manner, the truth reflects that reality.
There is enough evidence to make him out to be incompetent, inconsistent, and poorly equipped to manage a sensitive investigation like this. I do not see proof of a partisan motivation on his behalf, and I think that accusation is currently unfounded. We can leave it at that.
… right there. Ye olde double standard.
And the easy way to rectify that is for the FBI to release that information as well. If I were FBI director I would’ve released both and not withheld either. The Clinton campaign and Congress should absolutely pressure Comey to do that since the public has a right to know.
…that the public has a right to know about work midstream, but agree that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If he is going to blab about Clinton he should blab about Trump, though ideally he shouldn’t blab about either.
… the TRIPLE standard!! That’s some Olympic caliber unfairness there.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.
YET James Comey does get the benefit of the doubt
YET Hillary Clinton is responsible for calling on Comey to erase the doubt to which Hillary is not given the benefit. .. ouch. My head hurts… I think if you keep on like this you’re going to bend time and space upon itself.
The guy was special counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee in the 90s, which spent a zillion dollars and produced a giant report– just in time for the 1996 political conventions– that said– “yeah, we got nothing on the Clintons at all, but here is some speculation and innuendo, and also we didn’t like that they didn’t roll over and confess, which is a “pattern of non-transparency” which raises questions and clouds and shit.”
All the Dems then fell in love with him because he bucked the Bush administration on the wiretaps without a warrant– but oops his problem wasn’t with that, but with some other detail of the domestic spying program. This let’s him be some sort of respected neutral, which even Obama fell for.
Then the FBI actually concludes that Russia was trying to undermine the US election; but sits on that so as not to interfere with the political process, but then that damn letter last week, about email that wasn’t even HRC’s or on her computer.
I conclude: politically motivated hack.
Who still has seven years to serve before we can be rid of him.
Thanks, Obama.
on torture being okay.
Krugman has an interesting theory:
But he should have read his Emerson: “[W]hen you strike at a king, you must kill him.” This will be the end of his career, assuming Clinton wins, which remains overwhelmingly likely.
More generally, however, this is an indictment of Obama’s weakness in appointing a Republican to run the FBI. A Democrat never would have done this.
Comey is widely respected as a person of integrity, and it would be the height of political stupidity for Clinton to fire him. He stood up to Bush and Gonzales when they were trying to get unconstitutional wiretapping signed by an infeebed John Ashcroft. He has a record of putting country before party and was left with no good options here.
Elliot Richardson was also a Republican who put country over party, so is Bob Gates, so was Patrick Fitzgerald. If it was wrong of Bush to fire or delay confirmation for Democrstic USAA’s, it would be wrong if Hillary to fire competent people for partisan reasons.
It’s not quite Nixon firing Cox since the stakes aren’t nearly as high, but it would reek of the kind of vindictive politics that President practiced for Hillary to fire the person investigating her. The smart move would’ve been for her to apologize for this months ago and promise not to do it again. The smart
move would have been releasing all her emails to the public on her own after redacting for classification rules.
And this has noting to do with Donald Trump. We can criticize the nominee of we are supporting when she makes mistakes, that used to be what made us better than the blind partisans on the right.
Comey’s dramatic retelling of the Ashcroft story showed he sees himself on the side of heroism. People like that often see themselves as above the law & Comey’s actions this week reflect that.
Or are you just whining that he went after the candidate you support. It was ok when he acted against a Republican administration, he was a hero then not a partisan hack, but now he’s a partisan hack. Breitbart really went after him for rigging the election against Trump when he concluded his investigation without an indictment. It’s sad to see good, smart people I respect making similar arguments on BMG today.
Reality based means examining the facts and not letting partisan bias get in the way of the truth. A big reason the right is so dangerously unhinged today is that they ostracized gatekeepers willing to self critique their own side. Let’s not make the same mistake they did.
Clinton is going to make a good president. Arguably more qualified than anyone who ever ran before. Certainly better than the racist fascist she is running against. She’s a pragmatist committed to enacting the most progressive platform in history. I can believe these things and also believe she has been repeatedly irresponsible and unforthcoming in how she has handled this entire episode. It’s a critical early leadership test she should’ve passed with flying colors and
Justice Dept officials – including the current Attorney General – say he violated Justice Dept policy.
It might be time to revise your thoughts on Comey rather than blindly defending him.
AG Lynch knew that he was going to send the letter before he sent it…. he works for her, why did she not say “that is against our rules, I forbid you to send it!”?
Apparently because of another bullshit political consideration. Published reports say that this was ruled out because of the manufactured outrage about the informal meeting between Bill Clinton and Ms. Lynch on the tarmac of an airport.
The rationale offered is that the GOP would have claimed that Ms. Lynch was following through on a “deal” made with Bill Clinton had she taken that perfectly reasonable action.
It all strikes me as stupid political bullshit.
…is the easiest example of put up or shut up. Anyone who speaks of it should produce the tapes of Clinton and Lynch talking about the case or move along.
n/t
Don’t tell a subordinate what to do when you knew about, but you can no longer complain he did it.
in Barton Gellman’s biography of Dick Cheney. He wasn’t made out to be a hero, but his actions were described.
bullshit warrantless wiretaps. He acted correctly and nobly. Had this been a Democratic presidency, he never would have needed to do so, but this was George W. and the evil Dick Cheney. Nonetheless, I don’t see why he should be “widely respected” or any evidence that he is. I’m open to it.
James, you’re the only one who seems to have read my previous comment. Had more people done so, they might understand there are other things besides partisanship driving Comey. From what I’ve read, Comey has made some mistakes, ones that led to the present circumstances, but nobody’s perfect.
I’ll walk back the widely respected comment, all I meant by that is that he’s considered fair and impartial. He’s certainly not infallible and there are ways he could’ve handled the Friday release and the initial investigations closure better. The Justice Department is making some stringent criticisms of his actions and we should take them seriously as well. We should certainly talk about those.
My broader point is, let’s let this process play out before we call for him to be fired, impugn his motivations, or assume he has it in the tank for Trump since there is an ‘R’ next to his name. Trumps supporters happen to think exactly the opposite. And that tribal mentality prevents us from evaluating each issue and each circumstance on its own merits.
I can separate my critique of Hillary and her judgment on this specific issue and on other issues where she was wrong like Iraq from my overall support of her candidacy and her agenda. It isn’t hard, and it’s something sites like this are supposed to do. If I wanted “Comey is a Republican, Fire Him!” I’d still hang around Daily Kos. And you can be sure Brietbart and Drudge are saying “Fire Him!” for the opposite reasons.
Read this observation, quoted in the NYT:
“There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election,” said George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush. “Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences.”
As I said, Comey is playing games and trying to swing the election in favor of the GOP. That’s the reason to break with tradition. Bit it is too little, too late, and he would have been better advised not to try, I think. Obama also would have been better advised not to have appointed him, but that’s a separate issue.
He had a golden opportunity to do this in August and press charges, and did not. If he was as nakedly partisan as you accuse him of being, he would’ve done a lot more a lot sooner. This is too little, too late to stall her momentum. It may help the GOP downballot, it does nothing to help Trump. Maybe if Hillary had followed proper State Department policies in the first place she wouldn’t be in this mess. That’s not anyone’s fault but hers.
The buck stops here, and if she had just said that, owned up to it, and promised to be transparent in the future, if she had held more press conferences and was more available to the public, maybe she wouldn’t be in this mess.
I get the VRWC exists and will stop at nothing to destroy the Clinton’s. They also didn’t tell Bill to engage with Monica, they also didn’t tell Clinton she could use a private server against State Department policy. And knowing that the VRWC is out there should’ve made both of them extra cautious, instead they do reckless things and act shocked when their opponents make these molehills into mountains.
In case you have been living on Mars since 1990, they don’t do facts. Much better to issue an unchallengable smear, which is what he did. Raised clouds and questions and issues of transparency. What could the candidate do to be transparent in his view? Confess and resign. Maybe confess to killing vince foster.
opinion of these lawyers. Their argument isn’t necessarily legal, but it might be interesting to hear from you and our other attorneys.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/attorney-generals-role-clinton-email-mess
https://www.lawfareblog.com/james-comey-hillary-clinton-and-email-investigation-guide-perplexed
n/t
You write that Mr. Comey “was left with no good options here.” Nonsense. The right thing to do was the easy thing to do — follow long-standing DoJ policy and say nothing until he knew what the allegedly new material is.
Mr. Comey was not torn between right and wrong, he was instead torn between two explicitly partisan camps. That alone illustrates why the long-standing DoJ policy is in place and why Mr. Comey should have followed it. He can’t possibly know what’s “right” or “wrong” because he doesn’t know what’s in the material.
He jumped head-first into a rancid and toxic political cesspool. He should have known better.
How many times must Ms. Clinton apologize? She’s already done so, multiple times before multiple audiences.
Ms. Clinton had no way of knowing what was or was not on the laptop in question. If anybody did anything wrong, it was Mr. Weiner and Ms. Abedin. If nothing else, this latest episode demonstrates stunning ignorance of basic security principles among our elected officials and highly-placed staff. The idea that a member of Congress and a high-ranking state department staffer would SHARE a laptop is eye-poppingly shocking. That should NEVER have happened. NEVER.
This computer was issued to Anthony Weiner. Ms. Abedin should NEVER have used it to send and receive emails to anyone. Never. It would have been just as insecure (or more so!) if Ms. Clinton had used an official state department email server.
If there is fault or blame here, it is Mr. Weiner or Ms. Abedin — not Ms. Clinton — that we should be discussing.
There is absolutely nothing here that needed to be disclosed before the election. Nothing.
Whatever Mr. Comey’s prior behavior, this particular decision was flagrantly partisan and fully justifies his removal from office by whomever is elected.
Sure, but apparently there were folks within the FBI willing to leak the information who wanted to go after Hillary harder. He was dealing with that and persistent criticism on his right flank. Then the decision he made ultimately angered Clinton and her camp, giving him trouble on his left flank. So what should be a straightforward non-partisan investigation into whether a high ranking national security official violated national security protocol has become politicized by the right wing Congress and the Clinton camp has politicized it in kind.
Gambling correctly that partisan polarization will make them immune to scrutiny from their supporters and that the risk of Trump will allow them to retain swing voters, the media, and independents. So into this cynical cesspool walks Comey on a tightrope, and there was literally no way he would get out of this without falling into shit.
40% of the country thinks the entire email scandal is a pointless waste of time, the other 40% is ready to literally lock her up over it. Those of us in the middle recognize the danger of Trump, recognize the qualifications of Clinton to be commander in chief, but are still deeply troubled by her handling of this information and the aftermath. Not because she broke the law, I am not arguing that, though obviously the investigation that exonerated her is being reopened because of new evidence, but because she has repeatedly failed to heal this self inflicted wound in a timely or responsible fashion. Maybe her apologies are enough for you, they aren’t enough for 55% of the American public. And at the end of the day it’s housewives in Ohio, not liberals in Somerville she has to worry about. The risk isn’t they vote for Trump, the risk is they stay home.
You’ve just offered a political explanation for an act of an official bound by law (such as the Hatch act) to be non-political.
We are talking about the FBI here. If there are “folks within the FBI willing to leak the information”, the right answer is to prosecute THEM for violating security laws. Mr. Comey should have stayed far away from all this, and instead he plunged in.
You repeat the same old arguments about all those “housewives in Ohio”. I’m sick and tired of it. What you’re talking about is yet more Whitewater-style GOP harassment of Hillary Clinton — harassment that even you agree is explicitly partisan.
At the end of the day, it is the use of the FBI for partisan purposes in a flagrant attempt to influence a national election that we should all be worried about. That is far more threatening to the foundation of American democracy that anything that these emails might reveal — housewives in Ohio notwithstanding.
It’s a federal law enforcement agency, not the Praetorian Guard.
Then it’s rumors and sweet nothings that’s barely a blip beyond Breitbart.
An official letter to Congress (to the Republican chairs, of course) from the Director of the Fucking FBI is what made this a full scale shit storm, and he knew exactly what would happen.
Stop making excuses for this. None of them have been good. This was a nakedly partisan decision that goes against decades of policy, likely violated the Hatch Act, and IMO made by someone who has a lot to gain from it should Trump win.
Harry Reid? He isn’t even running anymore and he is still hiding under his bed.
HRC on the first day, Trump on the second.
I am appalled (but not surprised) by the flagrant abuse of the office demonstrated by Mr. Comey. He hasn’t even read the material — it is very likely to be repeats of what is already known. He has knowingly and intentionally turned the entire episode into yet another GOP Benghazi-style witch hunt.
Meanwhile, I like the “private Hillary” more than “candidate Hillary”. I see a candidate and a team that are smart, aware of their weaknesses, attuned to the changes around them, and striving to either advance their agenda or minimize their losses. I guess I enjoy watching sausage get made, even while I can’t do it myself.
I frankly think the people complaining about all this are people who’ve already bought into the anti-Clinton distortions manufactured by the right wing and the disaffected left. Her reference to Abraham Lincoln’s private versus public position is a great example — I see that as honest, forthright, and smart politics. It worked for Mr. Lincoln and I believe it will work for Ms. Clinton.
In my view, the wailing and gnashing of teeth about all this is nothing more than overwrought drama. Like Benghazi, this is just more purely partisan GOP hackery. If it wasn’t this, it would be something else. The GOP has long since abandoned aspirational speech in favor of relentlessly hostile negativity.
I anticipate Ms. Clinton being a far more effective president than Barack Obama, precisely because of the practices, attitudes, and behaviors revealed in this stolen material.
She was Secretary of State, conducting the government’s highly sensitive business.
She was “recklessly careless” and lo, the material was exposed. What exactly do you prefer about this?
I prefer this to the empty hostility, based on pure bias and prejudice, offered by the GOP. The Wikileaks material is coming from other servers, not hers. The most recent spate of rumored emails would be the same regardless of where her email was hosted.
More importantly, you make the rash assumption that the government’s servers would be more secure. There is compelling evidence that this assumption is invalid — to the tune of tens of millions of current and former US Government employees whose personal information was exposed in the OPM breach.
Ms. Clinton was Secretary of State — and an excellent one at that. This entire trumped-up faux-scandal is just another example of how the right-wing stops at nothing to disparage and destroy the accomplishments of any Democrat, and especially of any Democrat whose last name is “Clinton”.
We are in a cyber war. We have compelling evidence that foreign governments, especially Russia and China, are attempting to compromise our election process. I’m more interested in what the FBI is NOT disclosing about Donald Trump than the half-baked rumors it spread last week.
I encourage you to spend rather more time learning about what actually happened, and rather less time paying attention to the breathless hysteria of some regarding all this.
Does it bother you that one of our top officials broke protocol during the cyber war?
I think you misread the politics of this very badly. Yes, the GOP makes their usual noise, but that’s beside the point. Do you really think the average American doesn’t care about this?
Here’s what I think the average American thinks: I’d be fired for that in an instant.
And most move on — oh well, another example of one set of rules for me, another set for thee. But everybody understands what she did, and they’re free to speculate about why she did it. For a candidate who already has high negatives … she took a big risk. Too big a risk, in my view, for our election.
Oh and by the way — she has changed her story on this repeatedly, making it much, much (did I say much?) worse. The apology mentioned upthread came far too late. She tried to blame Colin Powell (twice). The whole mess is her fault, and a perfect metaphor for her deeply flawed candidacy.
I look forward to voting for her next week. But face it Tom, she messed up here.
I’m burnt out from this bad burlesque act that we call an election. In particular, I’ve had it up to here with assertions about what the “average American” thinks. All too often, that’s a plausible-sounding rationalization for unbridled speculation.
I think that the “average American” you posit would fare FAR FAR worse under this kind of spotlight than Ms. Clinton. I am convinced that Jesus Christ himself would be unable to get through this campaign without creating a similar “mess”.
I think the “average American” is suffering from acute loss of cranial function as a result of chronic overexposure to mind-numbing garbage broadcast non-stop by our media. The most striking aspect of my last six weeks in suburban Maryland (picture miles and miles of Route 9 in Framingham) is that literally everywhere you go — restaurants, bars, hotels, shopping malls, doctors offices, hospitals, nursing homes — there are not just one but several large-screen TVs offering the same mind-numbing pap around the clock over and over.
As an exercise for the reader, I suggest attempting to watch an entire “Today” show from beginning to end. At the conclusion of that, ask yourself if we should pay any attention AT ALL to those who voluntarily subject themselves to that every day.
I’m sick of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s “deeply flawed” candidacy. Whatever is there is there, and we’ve already plowed that ground hundreds or thousands of times.
What I’m far more interested in is what we do next — how we work together to find common ground, advance our progressive agenda, and rebuild an America that works for all of us.
n/t
This is a great line on Hannity, but is profoundly unlikely. I suspect that actual IT professionals hear it and laugh because people fuck this stuff exceedingly often. For the most part, people would not be fired on the spot because no one with authority to fire understands what the rule is, why it is, and whether it was broken.
No one understands that using an outside contractor to build a private server in your home to store work e-mail is frowned upon.
Technology is so wacky! Who can makes heads or tails of it?
EVERYONE understands that Ms. Clinton’s choice of building her own server was mistaken, it’s been belabored for years.
It is the choice of Mr. Comey to use the auspices of the FBI to deliver not just one but two batches of unsubstantiated garbage — the first directed at Hillary Clinton, the second at Bill Clinton from the turn of the century — that is “wacky”. It is the simultaneously decision of the same man to keep silent about possible Russian ties to the GOP and its nominee, citing a desire to avoid disrupting the election, that adds to the wackiness.
You continue to harp on Ms. Clinton, and you continue to say nothing about the flagrant partisanship of the current director of the FBI.
THAT strikes me as at least a little bit incorrect, if not downright “wacky” itself.
I recognize that I am outvoted on this. But do I really have to be compared to Sean Hannity?
It’s the argument you made. It’s favorite argument of the right, exemplified by folks like Mr. Hannity. I didn’t hear anybody suggest that YOU are like Mr. Hannity.
I’ve already made it clear that I’m not attacking you. I’m not comparing you to Mr. Hannity. I’m instead asking you, point black, why you remain so apparently eager to attack Ms. Clinton while remaining so silent about Mr. Comey’s acts.
What is your opinion about the Mr. Comey’s behavior?
I think he did so honestly though. He was caught between two bad choices.
Not releasing Trumps Russia data pipeline and releasing this, digging up Mark Rich just to troll. I’m not sure what his motives are anymore, what I do know is that the investigation is serious and merited by the facts and calling for the lead investigator to resign doesn’t seem like the right move. That’s all.
I think those are the facts we can agree to. It’s appropriate to investigate Weiner and Abedin, it’s inappropriate to call for the resignation of the FBI Director for doing his job. Where he isn’t doing his job-the double standards and Mark Rich, maybe the letter to Congress-he should be criticized. But keep the criticism level headed. This election isn’t being rigged, leave that to Breitbart and Trump.
I work in a growth industry — identity theft protection — whose revenues are exploding because the world is chock full of people who do far stupider things than what we’re talking about here. Not only are most of those people not fired, a huge number of them are promoted because nobody cares.
Understanding security is hard. It requires discipline and sustained attention to detail — attributes that are generally not high on the list of things executive teams seek in selecting management players.
A huge number of people who are victimized by breaches today are people who, for example, choose passwords like “password”, “12345”, or no password at all. Executives have laptops stolen because they walk away from a coffee shop and forget them, or leave them behind at an airport bar.
In real life, unlike “The Apprentice”, very few people get fired on the spot. This entire email episode demonstrates, more than anything else, the stunning ignorance of our entire society about basic principles of protecting privacy and security. Our media don’t know how to report it, our elected officials don’t know how to practice it, our government doesn’t know how to provide it, our investigative agencies don’t know how to analyze it (at least based on what we learn from these FBI disclosures). We are barely able to discuss it here at BMG — some of us reject even first principles about how such matters work.
Meanwhile, the media is hard at work telling us how close the election is based on this utter rubbish. We are making the most important choices in generations based on garbage that is barely fit for supermarket tabloids.
God, this is like debating with Petr about the Olympics. I had to take my server out every night and put it in a safe and they gave us a new password everyday for the safe. I could NOT take it home and I would’ve been prosecuted for violating the law. Of course high level officials have different protocols to answer to, but this is a big deal.
Especially if she wants to be credible about Wikileaks and hackers illegally going into her campaign accounts. Cyber warfare is real. I’ve had colleagues who had their bank accounts wiped out by Russian cyber warfare at the start of the Georgia War. This is really serious, and while I am sick and damn tired about arguing about it like Bernie, she has to address it more decisively. Not just as a candidate but as a President, zero tolerance for this in the future.
I understand security protocols.
I don’t think you understand how much the world has changed since the times you describe. Government agents used to use code books as well. In today’s world, two-factor authentication happens on every connection (two different randomly-generated sequences, provided through independent channels). In a world of tightly-interconnected supercomputers, daily password changes and safes are as effective against cyber attacks as a night-chain is against a dedicated burglar.
You are still arguing about Hillary Clinton. Please explain how and why Mr. Weiner and Mr. Abedin came to share a personally-owned laptop? Please explain how Ms. Clinton has anything at all to do with a process that causes HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of emails to accumulate on that laptop? How could that many emails get to ANY account without drawing the attention of monitors? One source has Ms. Abedin explaining that she often forwarded state department emails (from the state department server) to a yahoo or clinton account so that she could print them. Excuse me?
One reason we hear about these things from Mr. Weiner and Ms. Abedin is that that is where the FBI is looking (like the drunk who searches for lost keys under the streetlight).
I’d like to know about the last time that the FBI — or anybody else — did a security audit of government officials and their staffs. What practices are followed by Mr. McConnell? What practices are followed by Paul Ryan and his staff?
I’ll wager you another dinner at the Saloon that if I had started such an audit at the beginning of October, I could have announced several bombshell investigations of egregious disregard of security practices among Republican officials. I make that wager because I’m quite certain that these abuses and mistakes are so widespread as to be nearly universal. One reason for the 60-day prohibition is to avoid the moral hazard of making announcements like these. Mr. Comey should have followed that prohibition. That monkey is on the back of Mr. Comey, not Ms. Clinton.
Please don’t lecture me about the extent of your experience with security practices. I’m glad you did what you did, and I’m glad that you did your best to conform to the practices of the day.
Things are very different now.
There should be a universal investigation into cyber security and how public officials should handle classified information. There should be an investigation into foreign governments influencing our elections. There should be an investigation into every official and they should all be held to high standards. I have no idea why you keep on insisting that the standards should be lower for Clinton and higher for Trump, they should be high for both.
Comey made a mistake by not releasing the Trump information, he should’ve released both simultaneously. What I don’t understand is why the 60 day rule is sacrosanct when both candidates have an unprecedented level of mistrust on the part of the American public and an objective look into the record would reveal, I am sure, no malfeasance on the part of Secretary Clinton and substantial malfeasance on the part of Trump will be revealed. Why don’t you share the same confidence in your candidate?
She handled the tax returns beautifully by releasing them and showing she had nothing to hide and he handled them poorly. She should do the same with the emails, here’s what I did, here’s where I made mistakes, I apologize for my mistakes and learn from them-Trump never does. And why won’t he release his tax returns? Why won’t he release his connections to Russia? That’s how you win this issue. Not attacking the FBI and accusing it of playing politics.
I make no argument that “the standards should be lower for Clinton and higher for Trump”. I think the two should be the same, and I think neither investigation should have been announced before the election.
I think we’re well beyond “malfeasance” by either Mr. Trump or Ms. Clinton. That’s part of why I think this whole thing is being so badly handled. We are focused on the two candidates because we’re a week away from the election. It looks to me as though we have a systemic issue, MUCH larger than either candidate.
The very fact that we are STILL focused on the candidates demonstrates why the disclosures were so inappropriate — that’s why the 60-day rule is so important.
I think both should’ve been. I think that is the fair standard. The public does have a right to know in both unprecedented cases. I agree it’s ridiculous he kept Trump’s connections to Russian intelligence under wraps while releasing the letter to Clinton and simultaneously releasing information on Mark Rich now. I don’t know if that was retaliation for Clinton attacking him, but it was certainly unprofessional and entirely irrelevant.
I think we are actually a lot closer on this than this debate would indicate, and I think neither or both is a consistent standard, we just happen to disagree on the one we would’ve preferred. I think we can both agree Comey acted inappropriately, but we have different explanations for why. At the end of the day we both voted (unless you need to go out to the polls!) for Clinton despite the emails. We both feel Trump would be unqualified and frankly dangerous to a degree no other major candidate for President has been. I’m happy to leave it there.
GOTV is my priority now. We can debate this after Nov 9th, hopefully where it didn’t have an electoral impact.
Being the boss has its privileges AND she was told it was OK.
That’s news to me. Happy to look at a link and retract my contention.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/politics/hillary-clinton-told-fbi-colin-powell-advised-her-to-use-private-email.html?ref=politics&_r=0
…why I voted for Fiorina in the primary? Cyber crime and terrorism were centerpieces of her campaign; she said that the real ‘boots on the ground’ were hostile fingers on the keyboards, and the macho mindset of the military prevented us from waging 21st century war. Stuff like that, which CNN et al couldn’t be bothered to report as they were more interested in Ms. Kelley’s menstrual cycle.
A stuck clock tells the correct time twice a day.
Carly Fiorina was an absolute disaster in just about every other of her pronouncements — not the least of which were her outright lies about Planned Parenthood.
Ms. Fiorina never got any traction precisely because outlets like CNN more or less accurately reported her bizarre stances on a relatively long list of issues. She has accomplished the dubious distinction of making Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin look competent.
I did uprate since she was one of the few candidates to have cyber warfare discussed as part of her platform, though I would be remiss to remind my Republican friend that Hillary Clinton does too.
… failure to completely follow federal archiving rules. That’s it. That’s the charge. She didn’t archive her emails properly. That’s the charge. That’s the totality of the brouhaha. That’s the FBI report in a nutshell.
No evidence was found regarding ‘sensitive material’ Some classified materials was found on her servers, but they had been classified after the fact. Do you know how things are classified? Sometimes all it takes is someone saying “Hey, this should be classified.” That’s it.
I think you are going out of your way to nourish your active dislike of Clinton.
So there.
… “pretzel logic” is all there is to the accusations. derp.
Of course I’m tying myself up in knots…. that’s the genius of the accusation and the genesis of the charge of ‘lack of transparency.’ Anybody who tries to unravel incoherent arguments is going to so tie themselves up.
Quick, in one sentence, sum up Whitewater… You can’t do it.
Tell me what Secretary Clinton did re: Benghazi in one sentence. Can’t do it.
Clearly tell me the problem with the emails? Nope. Can’t do it.
Give me clarity on the accusations regarding the Clinton Foundation in one sentence? Can’t do it.
Any attempt to address any accusation just results in tying oneself into knots of pretzel logic (although a pretzel is a knot, so you’ve gone redundant) I’m just a dope who fell for it, again.
But you’re the dope who’s trying to have it both ways: faulting me for getting into pretzel logic and faulting Clinton for not getting into pretzel logic and calling it “insufficiently transparent”.
By the way I can explain the problem with all of those in a single sentence — and so can you.
This isn’t complicated. You want it to be complicated.
Have a nice day. Being a dope is a full-time job, so last word is yours if you want it.
The real world does not fit on a bumper-sticker. I remind us of Albert Einstein’s famous aphorism: “Things should be as simple as possible, and not more so”.
There is precious little logic in any of these attacks on Ms. Clinton. Never has been, never will be. As was observed up-thread, what we have is an excruciatingly long history of high-profile, vile and utterly false accusations, usually accomplished by abuses of government authority, followed by exoneration that is quickly swept off the radar — over and over and over again.
Comments like this are what “makes her problems worse”. You posit a standard that would destroy FDR, Eisenhower, LBJ, Lincoln — pretty much any actual human.
I don’t know what you do when you see tabloids in the supermarket checkout line, each filled with whatever the salacious “scandal” of the day is.
I ignore them.
n/t
… I didn’t ask for the problem with them. I asked you to clearly explain them. To sum them up. You can’t. I can’t. You would proffer your one sentence and I would pick it apart, getting into ‘pretzel logic’ and your eyes would glaze over and you would accuse me of being insufficiently transparent. That’s the genius of the vague accusation: It simply can’t be countered with specifics — though as I’ve demonstrated — people often seem compelled to try.
You discount how often the vague accusation has been used in politics… to the point that you don’t even think it is a tactic. It is a tactic. A very popular one for a certain segment of the population. It worked for Joe McCarthy. It worked for Ronald Reagan. It works for Donald Trump. And the clearest example of a repeated target of the vaguest accusations is Hillary Clinton.
I am having a nice day. Thanks.
My wife would agree with you =-)
I agree with the Lincoln quote and have defended Clinton repeatedly here. She had a reasonable expectation of privacy that Wikileaks violated, likely with assistance from Russian intelligence, and nothing she said there was anything that was different from her public self, only sharper and more confident in her abilities which I agree I want to see more of.
I haven’t seen an unequivocal apology similar to Bill’s at the end of Monicagate, and I think that kind of direct message to the American people, maybe framed like an Oval style speech on bought airtime, would clear the air and end the debate. And it should’ve happened months ago to insulate their team from an October surprise like this.
The Clinton’s are also too loyal to their own people. Doug Brand is responsible for turning Clinton Foundation into Clinton, Inc., for his own benefit. Even Chelsea wanted him excised. Huma Abedin have caused them nothing but grief, and they should’ve cut her out the moment she let Wiener run for a second shot at redemption.
We don’t know the connection yet, which is all Comey says in his letter, he is reopening the investigation so he can learn what the connection is. Sitting on that until after the election would look like favoritism to Clinton, releasing it now looks like favoritism to Trump. But the gamble is she will win the election anyway and his department doesn’t lose it’s integrity or legitimacy in the process as it reopens this investigation.
Show me DOJ officials that aren’t dependent on a future Clinton administration for jobs criticizing Comey, and I am open to it. If David tells me I am wrong, I am open to it. Otherwise I don’t see how we can suddenly leap to this conclusion:
That is all I am disagreeing with. Like I said, this doesn’t change my vote and I doubt this changes the outcome of the election. I can think she will be a good President, think she can be pragmatic and nimble in the Lincoln mold, while also believing she felt she was above the law and exercised poor judgment here and has consistently mishandled her response to this crisis. Obama surrounded himself with better people and was unafraid to jettison them when they caused trouble, which is a good quality to have in a president. Hillary has not shown that she has this quality, that doesn’t mean she won’t be a good President, it does make it harder for her to be and in my view, for no good reason.
She HAS in fact apologized multiple times for how she handled emails and has said it was a mistake, though I for one did not find it necessary.
And your feelings don’t matter Christopher since you’d be voting for her no matter what she did. Those voters who are honestly disgusted and turned off by this election are going to stay home, they won’t vote for Trump, but she is giving them little reason to vote for her.
Thank God for early voting, it’s likely she carries NV, NC, and VA with ease. PA seems solid. She can lose Florida and Ohio, which she would today, and still be President. But she potentially squandered the opportunity for a downballot and electoral mandate by this own goal. I hope and pray she didn’t, and her team finds a way to dig itself out of this mess.
I feel about Clinton the way I feel about the Cubs, I want them to win, but I am sick and tired of all these errors costing them a series they should’ve won with ease.
What will do it? She can’t unravel accusations that are insufficiently coherent. She did admit it was a mistake and she should have taken greater care. Why isn’t that enough for you? Maybe, just maybe, that’s all there is to it. Why isn’t that enough for you? Or anybody else, since you are now speaking on their behalf?
What’s it going to take to be sufficient: does she have to put on a hairshirt? Sackcloth and ashes? What…?
Do you remember, or even ever knew, the outcome of the Whitewater investigation? Likely not. We skipped right over the exoneration part and went right on to travelgate… and when that didn’t pan out (or, in the parlance of the day, the Clintons weren’t ‘transparent’ about it) along came filegate, after that was the death of Vince Foster and then Monica Lewinsky and impeachment. Do you know the outcome of the seven or so Benghazi hearings? Likely not. We, again, skipped right over the exoneration bit and onto something that seemed sinister but which was just another series of confusing accusations, insinuations and character assassination.
At each and every stage of each and every accusation ever made against the Clintons there was somebody just exactly like you claiming that Clintons weren’t being forthcoming enough.
14 convictions is hardly exoneration. I realize you’re referencing Ms Clinton and though she was not charged, let’s be clear on the outcome of the Whitewater investigation.
…was that a certain special prosecutor got frustrated that he couldn’t make anything stick to the Clintons that he started fishing for someone with whom Bill might have shared secrets and found Monica Lewinski, which he then investigated to see if there were a pattern to establish relative to harassment claims from Paula Jones. From there he essentially entrapped Bill Clinton into (sort of) perjuring himself (It really did matter how narrowly you define “is”.) and ran to an eagerly waiting House with a case for impeachment. It is this absolute legal disaster of the first Clinton presidency that makes me so quick to circle the wagons on this couple. Did I mention they ultimately LOST money on the original Whitewater deal?
And it’s worth reading in full. I’m now neutral on Comey instead of sympathetic, I do think he thought he was acting in the public interest, but it sounds like he mishandled this and didn’t anticipate this kind of reaction calling his competence rather than his partisanship into question. I still think calling for his head is an overreaction, and I recommend everyone read this piece.
POTUS pardons Hillary and company for any transgressions, real or imagined. The broo-ha-ha will be forgotten in a week.
“What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.” — Voltaire
A new ‘chaps like us’ rule for America.
It’s become a lot more difficult since Watergate for the rich and powerful to get punished when they commit crimes.
We have also seen congressional hearings become politicized. O’Neil’s hearing on the Beirut Bombing identified intelligence failures that led to it and solved the problems, unfortunately that’s not what Benghazi was about. And obviously that hearing blew into Emailgate when the committee, tasked with investigating something else, stumbled onto ‘pay dirt’ it could use. It’s Clinton’s fault for falling into the trap, but their fault for setting it. It’s done to advance a political purpose, not actually improve State Dept operations. And there was a recent time when hearings did more than that.
I do not expect this sort of nonsense to stop on election day or inauguration day or any other day. President H Clinton will be dogged by these fantastical fake scandals on a regular basis, based on triviality and innuendo.
The effect on our republic is difficult to know. It will certainly throttle the normal kind of public discourse, but of course “normal” is relative. While pundits sagely debate the fake scandal du jour, whither the fate of the planet?
My best hope is that if she is firm and lays out a way forward that has something for almost everyone, we can leave this destructive dynamic behind. My head says not to hold my breath.
Michelle Obama laid out the strategy for President Hillary Clinton. As the GOP goes low, she will lead the Democrats in going high.
Unlike Barack Obama, we know from Ms. Clinton’s long career in public service that she is far more effective as an elected official than as a candidate.
Part of healing from the toxic stew promulgated by haters of Hillary Clinton is to stop giving it credibility by discussing it. These fake scandals need to be relegated back to the supermarket tabloids where they belong.
Once the campaign ends, she will need to be firm and she will need to be tough. This is about reestablishing the badly damaged norms we need to function as a society.
The operating slogan for Candidate Clinton may come from Michelle Obama, but the one for President Clinton is probably more like the one from Harry S. Truman: Give ’em hell.
… that Harry S. gave. To wit: “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
This is a critical insight. The Right has long inveighed against the “Librul Media,” treating partisanship as, apparently, a more potent motive force than the truth. Harry S. Truman called them on it well before most, if not all, of us were born. Well, everything old is,indeed, new again.
And part of those norms include restoring clean elections and being fully transparent about what she does and who she gives access to for what reasons at all times. I am confident she can rise to this challenge. We all have a post-election responsibility to hold her to this commitment.
She should be very very careful and cautious about holding herself, and more importantly, her people to a very high set of standards so they can be beyond reproach. Did the right go after Obama on trumped up partisan scandals? Yes. Did any of them stick or affect his numbers or lead to an actual federal criminal investigation? No because everyone outside the right wing bubble could see through the bullshit.
The reason mainstream Americans, the mainstream media, and the objective investigators find her actions problematic is because they were. Illegal, no, but problematic. And I want No Drama Obama to continue under the next Democratic administration, or there won’t really be one capable of governing.
You’d think they would’ve learned from the near miss of impeachment not to give these guys anything to work with. For everyone who said she was sharper than Bernie or more willing to wage partisan warfare than Obama, this is a massive strike against her own political intelligence. There would never have been an investigation if she had followed the proper procedure and been consistently and fully transparent about it from day 1. And Tom you were absolutely on my side about the emails before the first primary debate when you settled on Clinton as your candidate. I just voted for her, something I will proudly tell my daughters some day. But boy did she mess this one up, and I am not a bad liberal for saying so.
do with this kerfuffle? Comey’s actions are the topic. It’s time to stop re-arguing the email scandal. What’s done is done. What’s the point of rehashing it? There’s no evidence that this latest dump actually has anything to do with Clinton’s server.
Nine-tenths of what’s being said in the media, left, right, and whatever is tainted by partisanship.
This is a media exercise whose purpose is to attempt to preserve interest in the most disgusting election in history.
News tonight is that the FBI is investigating Paul Manafort’s ties, but we know that via leak rather than statement from the Director. Also, it seems Comey refused to sign on with other intelligence agencies to the idea that Russia was behind DNC hacking because (wait for it), he didn’t think the FBI should intervene in a way that might influence the election!
That’s just my own opinion. I’ve consistently argued that Trump and wikileaks are being fed directly by Russian intelligence, something my own (admittedly lowest ranking) sources in the intelligence community have confirmed.
…would 9 days AFTER the election have been better?
… Hillary Clinton is the mostest guiltiest person ever, then of course, yes. 9 days AFTER the election would be too late.
On the theory that law enforcement officials, even including the Director of the FBI director, can make mistakes or even be wrong, neither before nor after makes all that much difference.
On the theory that law enforcement officials, even including the Director of the FBI can sometime engage in fishing expeditions, then neither before nor after is appropriate.
What’s yet to come out is whether the emails have anything whatsoever to do with FBI investigation into Clinton. If they don’t, and judging by Hillary Clintons response they don’t (since Clinton is in contact with Huma Abedin who sent the emails and is in the best position to know exactly what they contain…) then it’s up to Comey to explain why he did it and why at that particular time. Imagine if James Comey had taken the 18 days in question, from 9 days before the election to the 9 days after, whatever he said on E minus 9 would have greater clarity.
The actions of Attorney General Loretta Lynch are intriguing. She could have formally ordered him not do what he did, or ordered him to wait until 9 days after the election. It looks like she tried to do so informally… likely because she knew that a formal prohibition would have made its way to the press and your side would be shrieking (for all 18 days in question) about how the Attorney General was trying to protect Clinton.
It is unlikely that the FBI will finish reviewing the hundreds of thousands of emails on the laptop (the WSJ says 650,000 emails were found).
The time to announce this to the public is if and when new and relevant information is found. I suspect we are talking about months, not days.
I remember when Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was indicted right before the election, Republicans screamed bloody murder about this. The same ones who are cheering on Comey’s public gossip.
When he exonerated Hillary. Government isn’t a sport, I want the law to be followed. Investigating whether she followed it or not is appropriate, even if she is the candidate I support.
Ordinarily the FBI does not have long press conferences raising questions and clouds and shit when they don’t have enough evidence to indict.
…trying too hard to find balance (must be taking pointers from jconway). He just couldn’t say no indictment without saying some anti-HRC comments, could he?:(
When have I ever said Clinton and Trump were the same? Ever? I’m so sick of the attitude that any criticism of Clinton has to be a right wing conspiracy. It’s that kind of attitude that has consistently led her campaign to blunder. You said it yourself, this should be a 40 state sweep. I doubt O’Malley or Sanders would be having this problem.
…even if we assume the worst about these allegations against Clinton. You haven’t said she’s as bad as Trump, but you do seem to try too hard to find things to needle her on. I’ve said before and continue to feel that it comes across as concern trolling. Clinton should have been able to spend this entire campaign vacationing in some exotic location without a public word, that’s how obviously bad Trump is. It’s not her fault that 40% of America is willing to consider a Dangerous Unqualified Misogynistic Bigot for the highest office in the land because she’s what – ambitious?, secretive?, suspicious?, or maybe because she’s a WOMAN?!:(
Would that it were true, and it certainly shouldn’t be, but the GOP has turned government into something much worse than a sport. For a generation they have hijacked our system and made American political life hell when they do not get elected. They treated Bill Clinton and Barack Obama horribly and some have already suggested impeaching HRC before she’s had a chance to unpack her bags at the White House. We cannot give them any rope, unless it is to hang themselves.
They are hanging themselves for us, but the problem is Hillary’s team has shot a major albatross which the press, a majority of American voters, and federal investigators, not just the evil Republicans, have hung around her neck. I’ve never denied the existence of the VRWC, but it’s existence oesn’t give the Clintons’ immunity from prosecution or criticism and they supposedly learned this reality in the 90s and I thought they were supposed more experienced in anticipating it than Obama or Sanders. They continue to tragically prove me wrong. I don’t think they will lose to Trump, but if they do they have only themselves to blame.
The supposedly liberal press has never liked the Clintons. They were hicks from Arkansas in their view and didn’t go to the right parties, or something. They created Whitewater from almost nothing and it was downhill from there. Can you blame the Clintons for operating the way they do? The American public of course is going to absorb a quarter century worth of getting it beat into them that the couple can’t be trusted. The media constantly report about her lack of trustworthiness, which leads people to question her integrity, which leads the media to report that there are trust issues and the vicious cycle continues. Never mind that she has been rated among the most honest by outfits like Politifact. Never mind that people who actually know her and work for and with her sing her praises regarding ethics and other character issues, and that sometimes has included people who are not on the same page politically. The website http://www.shareblue.com has done a great job documenting a lot of this and I would encourage you to take a look.
Again, I voted for her. What I am arguing is not that the attacks or even the criticism is justified, just that it has severely undermined her ability to win this thing. This election shouldn’t be close. And blaming the opposition or sexism is an easy way out to excuse political malpractice on a large scale. Obama’s team wouldn’t have made these kinds of mistakes or invited this kind of scrutiny. The first reason I voted for him was because he opposed the Iraq War, the second is that I wanted a fresh start from the Clintons.
I repudiated that second argument on BMG in the face of Obama’s Winter Year of 2010-2012 in a lengthly post apologizing for my mistreatment of Hillary in the primary and expressing genuine admiration for her for 2016. Then Bernie came, and I wanted his voice and issues to have a say, but I never ever questioned her progressiveness or her capabilities to be President. You have to give me credit here.
But that second argument is revitalized by her handling of this and other issues within her campaign. She shouldn’t have been the flawed nominee she was, she shouldn’t have squandered her approval rating, she shouldn’t have taken Wall Street money for speeches even if it were perfectly legal and the norm for DC insiders. She should’ve held herself to a higher standard and made politically smarter decisions. And if she loses the election it will be her fault, not the FBIs.
Robert Kuttner has a great piece on this.
Attorney General Lynch was informed about this letter before Director Comey sent it. She is his boss, why did she not just say “It is against our policies, I forbid you to send the letter until after the election!”?
Just noticed you asked the same thing, but better than I did…. with a possible explanation.