A horrifying piece in the WSJ about just how broken our FBI is right now:
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.
The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the previous probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
***At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.
Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe, these people said. After the investigators spoke, the agents agreed it was potentially relevant.
Mr. Comey was given an update, decided to go forward with the case and notified Congress on Friday, with explosive results. Senior Justice Department officials had warned Mr. Comey that telling Congress would violate policies against overt actions that could affect an election, and some within the FBI have been unhappy at Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements on the probe, going back to his press conference on the subject in July.
The back-and-forth reflects how the bureau is probing several matters related, directly or indirectly, to Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle.
New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in the bureau’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case.
Takeaways:
No one is in control. No one.
There’s a general level of incompetence that is staggering. How could applying for a warrant in this case be an oversight?
There appear to be careerists in the FBI who have been engaging in a wide-ranging fishing expedition regarding the Clintons for some times, to the extent of attempts at prosecutor shopping.
The place leaks like sieve.
It certainly appears that there needs to be a great deal of housecleaning in the FBI, from top to bottom. There are clearly a number of agents who are either acting out of personal political motivation or are frustrated from years of investigating Clinton and finding nothing actionable that now they just can’t live with the fact that maybe they haven’t done anything illegal or wrong, and are extra sure that this time, oh baby, this time they will catch them. Remember, investigators and prosecutors don’t get promoted for looking at cases and saying “There’s nothing there.” The glory and the headlines are when you can win the case and get a conviction.
The rot is deep, though.
And as an aside, please stop saying that Comey attempted to influence an election.
He didn’t attempt anything. He clearly successfully influenced the election, to the point that it is so obvious that an ethicist from the C+ Augustus Reign of Derp has filed a complaint that Comey violated the Hatch Act.
Update at 7:30 PM EDT by Adam L. Silverman
I’ve been in touch with John and just want to add a quick update:
You may have noticed in the WSJ article that John excerpted above indicates that Deputy Director McCabe, who had been reported on in regard to Governor McAuliffe’s fundraising for his wife before he was a deputy director, is the official that ordered that this needed to go forward. The reporting above indicates that he decided to have the two different teams of investigators converse to determine if the national security folks needed to go forward and get a warrant. So much for McAuliffegate and the alleged campaign fundraising quid pro quo, which never made sense because the timelines didn’t match up. One final point. The author of both the article alleging malfeasance on Deputy Director McCabe’s part, under influence from the Clintons and Governor McAullife through donations to his wife’s campaign for state office, is Devlin Barrett. The same author of the WSJ piece John excerpts above.
Baud
If you want to vote against the Establishment, vote for Hillary.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
This is why Republicans shouldn’t be allowed to run a freakin’ 5K, much less a government agency.
debbie
Since there’s an Election 2016 tag:
Has anyone seen the anti-Trump ad by a PAC named the Fifty Second Street Fund? It’s in pretty heavy rotation here and specifically includes my town (Columbus, OH) in it. It’s run 3 times in the past 15 minutes (same channel).
It was formed by Bill Bradley, of NBA and NJ fame. The Web page is just the video and a WH Auden poem, From Another Time.
I’m curious as to whether it’s being shown anywhere else and if so, do they substitute another town for Columbus?
encephalopath
They’ve been reading the emails without a warrant, you just know it. That’s why Comey said he was heading off a leak in his letter to Congress.
PPCLI
Let us remember that the 4th Amendment was put in place largely to guard against a particularly detested British practice — seizing a person’s private papers and rummaging through them searching for incriminating material. That is exactly what has been going on here, for quite some time.
cokane
i just watched a Frontline documentary called “The Man Who Knew” about an FBI agent who hunted bin Laden pre 9/11. Pretty chilling example of incompetence there. A great doc too, it’s for free on Youtube.
SiubhanDuinne
Agreed.
And exactly how does President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton go about that? Whatever scrutiny of the FBI is brought to bear — let alone any action her administration takes to clean things up — will be labelled as hyper-partisan, politicising a fine independent investigative agency, payback, etc. Whatever she does, House Republicans will, I guarantee you, deem her actions worthy of impeachment.
Jeffro
Never been more fired up in my life to GOTV, get a great candidate elected…and then hope & pray that these assclowns get everything they have coming to them, in spades. Orangemandias is an extreme danger to our republic and everyone in it, even if half of them don’t realize it. G.O.T.V.
Another Scott
@debbie: I’d not seen it before. Thanks for the pointer.
Dunno how effective it will be, but it’s good to remind voters of where he stands on nuclear weapons.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill E Pilgrim
And now Harry Reid has accused Comey of possibly violating the Hatch Act as well.
And using a double standard — wow, some interesting info in that letter. Serious allegations being investigated about Trump ties to Russia, which Comey has shown to Reid, but Comey didn’t release any explosive letter regarding that.
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne:
1) They can impeach all they want – no way to convict in the Senate
2) Impeachment is overplaying their hands – helps clarify things for everyone but the complete nutter Right. Might actually help Ds in the midterms, although I love my country too much to hope it happens (even if beneficial to Dems)
3) She’ll do it anyway (or Obama will do it on the way out the door).
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
It appears the RBI is rotten to the core.
Oldgold
This is a damn rogue operation.
No way, no how, you forget to get a search warrant.
debbie
@Jeffro:
At times like this, I like to listen again to Bryan Cranston’s reading of Oxymandias. Thanks for the reminder.
Major Major Major Major
There’s a good piece at Slate about the very high likelihood that this whole shebang is unconstitutional.
ETA: and, of corse the FBI is rotten to the core. Always has been.
Lizzy L
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t suppose the Dalai Lama would want to take it on. //snark
Msb
Well, this is the same wonderful agency that tried to get MLK to kill himself. One had hoped they had progressed a bit since then, but …
MazeDancer
No better person for that job than steel-spined, freedom-loving Hillary Clinton. Let her vent her hawkish ways of purity ponying the FBI.
Maybe a new reward system needs to be put in place.
Some excellent hospitals (had one as a client) realized they were losing their best on-the-ward nurses to the promotion chain only being about moving up to supervisor. But supervisors don’t treat patients. So new reward system created where great nurses, who want to stay treating patients, still get promoted and get more salary without being full-time supervisors of other nurses.
Agents who do a great job and find nothing ought to be rewarded.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
By hyper-partisans. We’re in an endless loop!
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bill E Pilgrim: Edit seems to be broken and run out fast, I replaced the link above with the wrong one, here’s the one I originally posted.
I thought the one I replaced it with was a more legible version but it was an earlier letter.
Betty
@cokane: That was Louie Freeh’s FBI. Shows him as being a real jerk too.
SiubhanDuinne
@MazeDancer:
Nice. This is how we counter the Peter Principle.*
*EDIT: Did not mean to imply that the nursing supervisors were incompetent, only agreeing that it’s vital to keep good people doing what they love to do and are good at, and reward them accordingly.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
She doesn’t. AG Lynch takes care of the most important cleaning, starting on 11/10. Someone on an earlier thread suggested having Comey issue a loud and long retraction (OK, the “loud and long” is my addition, it wasn’t in the original). Make sure all the MSM picks it up, puts it on the front page. (Normally, I’d want him to do it this Tuesday, but the Drudge-fueled MSM would thereupon spend a couple of days blaming Hitlary.)
Two days after his public humiliation, fire his ass. (Rumor has it that he can be fired before his term ends.) Wipe out his pension. Salt the earth around his condo/mansion/whatever.
Two days after a new, non-Rethug Director is installed, have him start an investigation of Jason Chaffetz. (Which falls under the ancient legal doctrine of “Fuck me? No, fuck YOU!”)
Or am I going too easy on that whole cabal?
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: yep. This is how you can tell an organization is well run.
D58826
@Bill E Pilgrim: The last two lines in Reid’s are classic. He helped defeat the GOP filibuster of the Comey nomination because he thought Comey was an honorable man. He admits that he was mistaken in the assessment.
Somebody did a quick calculation on the 650k e-mail number and it would take 90 e-mails a day from 1995 to reach that number. I guess Wiener’s junk is a lot more popular than any one had imagined.
SFAW
@Betty:
And for good reason — he was. He hated Bill (and maybe Hill), and it showed in his actions.
Jorge P
Thank you, Mr. Cole, for not giving in to being “reasonable.”
We’ve been fighting these folks with 14 ounce gloves while they’ve been bare knuckle brawling. Time for that to end.
Cacti
Comey’s just following in the ethical tradition of J. Edgar Hoover.
The fucking criminal whose name adorns the headquarters of the G men.
NoraLenderbee
Link Link to Reid’s letter of Oct 30 to Comey.
WaterGirl
Harry Reid to Comey:
WaterGirl to Harry Reid:
I love you, Harry Reid. You will be missed. Although I hope you don’t go away just because you won’t be in the senate anymore. I would love to see you on the TV machine, speaking for democrats and throwing some punches.
Jeffro
@SFAW: Reid’s letter is an excellent opening for those in the know to reveal just what has been found out about Trump/Putin connections and contrast Comey’s lack of disclosure of those with his innuendoes about Clinton.
On the one hand, America, we have a campaign and a candidate working with the intelligence services of a hostile foreign power.
On the other, America, we have a candidate with an aide who…what?…was sexting? Nothing to do with the candidate herself.
Schlemazel
@D58826:
Well I get over 100 emails a day now. Most are garbage, forwards and replies to crap I have no part of. I could see that number as the very high end depending on how long the account has been active.
WaterGirl
@NoraLenderbee: That letter is a thing of beauty!
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yep. Welcome to out of control special prosecutor 2. I’m going to guess that these emails were part of what they already have, but what they want are the emails of the correspondence between Hillary and Huma after her time at state, which should be off limits. I very much doubt that the entire contents of Hillary’s server are on the GD personal laptop of Anthony Weiner, and I doubt that Anthony and Huma were still using the same laptops that they were using in 2012.
Sloane Ranger
@D58826: They could be counting each email in a chain individually.
Bill E Pilgrim
@D58826:
This is one of the things I want everyone to take as a lesson from this, as if lesson number six million and two were even required. Stop looking at Republicans like normal elected officials, stop expecting bipartisanship, stop expecting them to be honorable or reasonable.
From everything I’ve read about this the logical conclusion is that Comey was more afraid of Tea Party Republicans than he was of Democrats. He’s having a rude awakening that so many non-Tea Party Republicans are joining in condemning him and calling for investigation into whether he violated the law. So even someone who you deem a reasonable, non-extremist is manipulatble by the extremists, and can’t be trusted.
Enough. Clinton should not put Republicans in her cabinet for example, that’s the first and most pressing instance where this will matter. If Obama and others can work on de-Gerrymandering and somehow bring things back in alignment with reality, who knows, but until then stop expecting Republicans to act like anything but wild-eyed extremists or those who are under their influence.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: If you want to vote for the only qualified candidate, vote Secretary Clinton.
@WaterGirl: Harry Reid really knows how to pack a punch. Ouch!!
Peale
@Peale: what they want, is an email from Hillary to a Huma going “Jesus, I can’t wait until I’m done being president so I can reveal my commitment to Satan.”
WarMunchkin
@SFAW: I see this in the same lens as the decision by President Obama not to go after Bush administration officials, which had tradeoffs. So in a cartoon world along those principles, pre-emptively pardon Comey, allow Chaffetz to go through with the special prosecutor and not-even-hiding-it-anymore impeachment, get it over with.
Our task as Dems is to somehow repair these institutions, which means figuring out how to restore independence and norms of these institutions while getting the 1/3 of Americans who are closer to tote baggers than Republicans to believe that someone Hillary appoints could do the job. Otherwise we’re going to end up in a situation where the consensus is that only another GOP daddy can restore impartiality, and I don’t want another scorpion.
Run, Lillian!
I am so pissed about all of this that it motivated me to finish my ballot today, will drop off tomorrow. That is a vote for Hillary/ Bennet/ DeGette in Denver, CO that was locked in anyway but now is in early as a fuck you to Comey et all. Will be canvassing this week.
Eric Pearson
US Congressman Trey Growdy is investigating Hillary’s email scandal case. So right up front, FBI Director James Comey asked for immunity and Gowdy told him flatly, “Hell No.”
That’s right. What Comey is asking for is to be absolved of what he’s done and anything that may happen in the future from any further investigations. In turn, one may ask how this doesn’t throw up the biggest red flag in American history? Well it did to Trey Gowdy, and he just ripped Comey a new one, not to mention, he is about to do everything in his power to stop that immunity from happening.
One might think Comey is running out of clever excuses to overlook Hillary’s obvious criminality, and it has come back to bite him and the country he supposedly serves.
However, eleven days before the presidential election, James Comey has told several members of Congress he is reopening the investigation involving Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she headed the State Department.
What is plainly obvious is Comey has not started a legitimate investigation, for when Comey wrote the letter he had no idea what was in the content of the emails. Matter of fact, Comey and the entire FBI haven’t obtained a search warrant to review the new emails related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
When putting it all together, this is just another treasonous act by James Comey to protect Hillary Clinton along with his own ass from being prosecuted. In other words, Comey can now save himself by recommending a federal indictment against Hillary if Trump wins, and do nothing if Hillary wins.
James Comey is a traitor by his own hubris and of that destructive machine called Clinton.
Read more at: http://www.patriotortraitor.com/james-brien-comey-jr/
Percysowner
@D58826: They’re probably not all from Weiner and his wife or personal/professional emails. I get thousands of emails over a week from news alerts, comment alerts, politicians I gave money to in 2008 and 2012, advertising from companies I bought something from once. I actually have multiple accounts just so I can separate social activity, from household activity from political activity. On just my social activity I can get 4000-5000 emails a week. I have no idea how many I’m getting in my political activity account, because i check for the politicians I’m actually interested in hearing from and dumping the rest. So 650K emails really doesn’t seem that much all in all, if someone never emptied their trash.
Baud
@Run, Lillian!: This has made me so angry. I’m comfortable with my sociopathy, but this election is turning me into a hater.
Patricia Kayden
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Already have. I can’t foresee any circumstance under which I would vote for a Republican. And their constant racism/sexism/homophobia/xenophobia makes it easy for me to not consider them as deserving of my vote.
hovercraft
Patrick Murray the Monmouth University Polling director was on with Jot Reid earlier said the reason that Hillary is going to Arizona this week because more than half the state has already voted and she is ahead in that vote. This may be why he is trying for Nevada and Colorado to make up for the loss of AZ.
SiubhanDuinne
I love both of NMFTG Harry Reid’s letters to Comey. The second one, with today’s date, is a masterpiece.
SFAW
@Jeffro:
No, it’s that Hitlary left tippity-toppity-secret documents on her server, and the KGB, OGPU, the Stasi, and the Keystone Kops were all able to access them and subsequently publish them in the Trump Steaks Monthly Newsletter, thus compromising Jew-S-A’s Nashunal Sekyuritee.
OK, that’s a little over the top, but it’s actually not especially different from some of the comments I’ve seen from the RWNJs.
And what’s interesting is that, for all of the mail and server hacks we’ve heard about, I don’t recall hearing that Hillary’s private server had ANYTHING stolen from it, or that it was EVER hacked — only a lot of OMFGs that “what if it HAD happened? OMFG OMFG!”. Or am I forgetting something?
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: O-o. You’re revealing too much. Don’t say anything here that could damage your run in 2020.
Betty Cracker
I’ve just returned from a blissfully media-free road trip and am catching up on the Comey-Abuse-of-PowerGate reporting. The WSJ says there are 650K emails. How is that possible? HRC was SOS for four years. Is it possible Abedin received about 450 emails every day of the year for all four years? WTF?
WaterGirl
@cokane: Is that movie about the FBI guy who couldn’t get anyone to take the threat of Bin Laden seriously, got labelled a troublemaker, finally quit the FBI and took the job as head of security at the World Trade Center? Whose first day on the job, I believe, was Sept 11, 2001, and he was killed in the attack on the WTC?
I read a story years and years ago about the guy I just described, and it has haunted me. So I’m wondering if your movie is about that guy.
MazeDancer
NFLTG Harry Reid telling Comey you gonna leak, I’m going to leak bigger and take you down, is wonderful. Even if it compounds the proper procedure problem.
But if you would like to laugh really loud and hard, this vid destroying Jason Chaffetz is what you need. There is speculation that Chaffetz endorsed Trump because he knew about the Weiner laptop. I, for one, hope Comey-gate becomes Chaffetz-gate. But until then, that vid helps.
Peale
@Betty Cracker: Weiner had that many. It must have a very large holding capacity on that are drive.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I think that number is the total number of emails, including solicitations from Nigerian prince and so and so has updated their Facebook.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: It doesn’t matter. Just like with Obama, it doesn’t matter what he does, they will make a fuss about it. So Obama just has to continue to do the right thing and that’s what Hillary will have to do, too.
I think she should put someone she has known and trusted for a long, long time in charge of the FBI, of course getting that person confirmed will be hard. See previous conversations about taking back the senate.
Edit: it’s like the abused spouse thinking that if she can just get the house cleaned right / dinner on the table right / not say the wrong thing/ etc then maybe he won’t hit her.
The silver lining to “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” is that you have the luxury of doing the right thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: They’re counting all sent and received, I’d imagine, and as someone said up thread, that would almost certainly include every group email with multiple responses (edited) and every “Sidney sent this– waddaya think?” “That he’s kinda goony” “Yeah, but we go back a long ways, could you print it out so I can find something to say I found interesting if I run into him” “Sure” “thanks”
or, as this guy put it:
SFAW
@WarMunchkin:
That’s a really interesting idea. Fucking over Comey while making it look like something else.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Patricia Kayden: Oh I assume pretty much anyone here also has, I’m talking about Democrats in office. They still act with an expectation that there are reasonable and unreasonable Republicans — well look at what Reid said about Comey. The point is, you can’t risk it. Even if they’re not extremists themselves, they can succumb to the pressure of those who are. There are exceptions of course, like the ones objecting to Comey’s action now, but the point is there’s zero way to predict who will cave to the crazies.
burnspbesq
I knew I could count on Cole to not fly off the handle based on pure speculation and anonymously sourced bullshit.
WereBear
It seems that any institution will not change unless it is forced to. There isn’t any, “This is a bad trend, let’s reverse it before we get into trouble.”
No, the huts have to be on fire, the giant spiders swarm out of the volcano, and the ominous crack in the moon which will release Cthulhu has to actually happen before anything gets fixed.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: I think President Obama will get the ball rolling on the FBI right after the election.
hovercraft
@SiubhanDuinne:
This is the end result of 40 years of running against government, while at the same time seeding it with anti-government zealots. As far as the FBI, law enforcement just like the military tend to attract more republicans into their ranks than democrats, it’s just the nature of the job. So we start from a disadvantage in the numbers anyway. What the GOP has done in using government as a political weapon against your enemies they are destroying our governments ability to function.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Msb:
This is the agency that got the Chicago Police Department to assassinate Fred Hampton. It’s almost like it exists to enforce white supremacy.
RK
A strange affair. So shouldn’t the campaign be telling Clinton voters in Utah to vote for McMullin?
Brachiator
People should do a google search on “FBI Louie Louie” to see how much time the feds devoted to finding dangerously subversive lyrics in a pop song.
Stupidity is foundational to intelligence agencies.
hueyplong
If Comey were pardoned, that would confirm in the Flying Monkeys’ minds that he was a sellout.
Would be kind of like the American POWs throwing Nazi mole Peter Graves out of the hut for the Germans to shoot at the end of Stalag 17.
Betsy
I’ve been doing campaign stuff and haven’t been able to check in on BJ in a few days. Normally it keeps me absolutely tickled. Somebody, please fill me in on a highlight or two? Or links to favorite comments …
Reading posts and comments here gives me a kick. Miss it greatly. Probably lots of us are torn between enjoying the election and working on it. Props to anyone who can do both …
Baud
@Betsy: You are doing God’s work.
barbecue swinger
@Patricia Kayden:
My husband and I voted today in Houston and were debating whether to vote straight ticket or not because a few of the Republican judges are pretty good according to a lefty lawyer friend of ours. We both decided to vote straight ticket, though. My husband doesn’t trust any Republicans because of their efforts to suppress votes via voter I.D. laws, and I’m done giving the Powells and Comeys of the world a chance to prove they’re “honorable men.” They’re clearly not.
JPL
The WSJ is horrifying, because there are members of the FBI willing to look everywhere until they find a Clinton scandal. They need to be fired and sent to a desert island to write their book.
It goes without saying.. vote, or someday, the rogue FBI members can be searching through your drawers also.
Tokyokie
@Bill E Pilgrim:
For Comey is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men
Oldgold
From Reid’s letter to Comey:
“You possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors and the Russian government.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This has been my beef all along with all the Clinton allegations: Benghazi, Emails, WALL STREET SPEECHES and the foundation, the constant standards, the Clinton standard, is “prove you didn’t do anything wrong”. And I’m talking about the media, not Trump. He just bellows what they’ve been saying for years.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I just checked and i have 10,000+ email in my inbox – I probably cleaned out my inbox a year ago and filed tens of thousands of messages into individual folders. Who has time to go through everything?
I hope their warrant limits them to messages from date x to date y.
Blueskies
@SiubhanDuinne: I agree that it’s a given — no matter WHAT a Democratic President does, the Repukes will whine like babies. So, the President may as well do what it right and do it with resounding conviction. Hell, if half the ‘Pukes from Iran/Contra had been well and truly shitcanned back in the day, the whole world would be so, so much better off today.
Jay Noble
650,000 emails. But the only ones pertnent would be those from Hillary’s time at State. There goes a big stack. Any that do not mention Hillary by name or title in the body text – gone. Any that aren’t addressed, cc’d or bcc’d to Hillary – gone. That shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. The very miniscule pile of emails left could then be searched for the magic words “Benghazi”, “Confidential”, “Secret”, and “Top Secret”. Show us those. Tomorrow by that Senate deadline. Not weeks. Tomorrow.
Villago Delenda Est
The FBI is badly broken, riddled with partisan hacks who do not give a damn that they’re now operating as Reinhard Heydrich or Lavrentiy Beria (who Stalin introduced to FDR as “our Himmler”) would have them act.
Wapiti
@Cacti:
Perhaps the building should be renamed to the Martin Luther King, Jr. building. They could have a little exhibit inside about the things the FBI pulled to frame/destroy MLK.
WaterGirl
@Jay Noble: Yep, yep, yep, yep and yep. These fuckers at the FBI shit the bed and they had sure as hell better move faster than the speed of life in an effort to stop the bleeding.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jay Noble: “Um, how does this ‘global search’ thingy work again?”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@SiubhanDuinne:
Wait until some scandal like violating the 4th amendment to try and fix an election. At which point she has the support she needs verse the 27% who will make the FBI in the martyrs.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Villago Delenda Est: Um yeah if they can’t use a computer to figure this out, how do we trust them to figure any of it out.
Patricia Kayden
@Jay Noble: You’re 100% right. Dems should lean on the FBI to make haste with its “investigation” to avoid this being dragged out through the election. Otherwise, it looks as if the FBI is trying to smear Clinton and throw the election to Trump.
@Wapiti: Wouldn’t that be delicious if the FBI building was named after Hoover’s nemesis? Talk about justice delayed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: CDS is epidemic in the Village; has been for a quarter century. Hillary sneezes, and they think it’s Ebola; some Bush entity kills hundreds of thousands, and they yawn. Mrs. Greenspan, all by herself, is a one person CDS vector; she should be isolated like Typhoid Mary.
SiubhanDuinne
@Blueskies:
Yup. Watergate (Nixon), Iran-Contra (Reagan), Iraq War (Dubya). Whatever Bill and Hillary may have done — certainly not much at the same level of venality — simply shrivels to nothing in comparison.
Joel
Honestly, I can’t get heated up over this. Yeah, it’s partisan bullshit but we knew these fuckers weren’t going to lose lying down. So let’s just work harder to make ’em lose.
canvassed today and it felt great.
Also, stop watching cable news, now and forever.
Peale
I’m still guessing this Weiner investigation has been about getting Huma or Anthony to become Susan MacDougal.
Anoniminous
The FBI are a bunch of fuckups and cockroaches.
cokane
@WaterGirl: yes, it’s very haunting
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
They don’t call “military intelligence” an oxymoron for nothing, you know.
Kay
Since he’s completely fucked this up the least he could do is even it up. We all know they’re investigating the emails and Wikileaks and they’re probably investigating Russian involvement in that and/or Trump campaign involvement.
Comey likes press conferences. Why doesn’t he go out and make some vague but damning statements about those investigations and then the whole FBI can leak bits and pieces of those too for the next 9 days?
Also, I can’t help but notice that the same guy who treated us all to completely out of bounds OPINING on Hillary Clinton’s management practices in July can’t see to get his employees to shut up. Are the FBI employees planning to selectively leak damning bits of this story for the next 9 days? Jesus Christ. Every 15 minutes there’s a new leaked detail. They’re convicting her without a trial. Who is running that place? Donald Trump?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bill E Pilgrim: That is the WTF in all of this. The Russians are trying to fix our election and the MSM is obsessed over trivia.
WaterGirl
MajorMajorMajorMajor:
Please exclude any and all of the BJ threads from the past week through 11/9 from your next analysis of our affect when posting. I’m pretty sure I have expressed enough anger and and said enough bad words to outweigh anything nice I have ever said on this website. I’m also sure I am not alone!
Mr Stagger Lee
Of course they on the case investigating Black Lives Matter and those protesting at Standing Rock, but how about those Oathkeepers, 3%ers, Bundyites, not too mention those who threaten insurrection if Hillary wins, not so much.
Betsy
@Betsy: sigh, meh, me and my unerring instinct for the wrong time and place … I’ll wait for an open thread
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: I’m starting to think she should have Pelosi file the articles of impeachment herself as a discharge petition and get it to the floor with Dem signatures and the Freedumb Caucus. Just to get it out of the way.
Keith G
So…In the event that the worst happens (and currently, I highly doubt that it will), the two people most likely to be responsible for the shredding of the Obama legacy will be two folks appointed to high office by Barak Obama.
That would be some plutonium grade Shakespearean shit.
MazeDancer
NY Times reports FBI – finally – got a warrant to search Huma’s emails.
So, what are the chances that in a couple days, the FBI uses the “truth” to lie? Say they found some “possible” violations. Or at very least, some “new emails that need classification review”
They’ll find something. They’ll make up something. There will be something.
They will ignore that every liar will be fired after the election. Though, of course, Breitbart will offer every persecuted FBI agent a job.
It’s going to be a long, hard slough to Freedom in the Information Age.
Kay
@Joel:
It’s just really fucking interesting that all the Wikileaks theft and all the FBI leaks involve ONE candidate and not the other. They’re all very tight-lipped and professional about those investigations! They’re blabbing away to the WSJ about Clinton and not a peep out of any of them on Trump.
Are they afraid of Trump too, like half of media is afraid of Trump? I never dreamed these people were so easily cowed. This 3rd rate real estate developer has them all shaking in their boots. God forbid they ever have to deal with a smart authoritarian strongman. We’re screwed.
WaterGirl
@cokane: Just seeing your reply brought tears to my eyes. Everything that happened on sept 11, 2001 and all the horrible things that have come from it were totally unnecessary if the right people had just listened to the people who were paying attention and connecting the dots.
I’ve saved your info about the movie – I surely can’t watch it in the next two weeks or I will either spontaneously combust or melt into a puddle of rage. But I will watch it sometime after that. thank you.
Peale
@Kay: on the Russian item, I’m reminded that Hoover refused to believe in the existence of the mafia until it became obvious that it was everywhere.
Adam L Silverman
Just put a quick update up top.
Oldgold
More of Reid’s extraordinary letter to Comey.
“In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity…..I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public…and yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.”
WaterGirl
@Betsy: I will say that on the Bundy thread earlier this week after their acquittal was announced, someone kindly linked to a live feed kitty cam in an effort to calm me down a bit.
Kitty Cam
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: They’re not afraid of Trump. They are remorseless eating machines when it comes to Hillary Clinton, and they’re afraid they’re running out of time to ruin her.
Jeffro
@Run, Lillian!:
Amen. I’m signing up for 3 canvassing shifts (2 more than originally planned) this coming weekend, plus more canvassing and rides-to-the-polls on Election Day.
Joel
@Kay: I think a lot of these folks, well, they *like* Trump. They are the Serpico 10%.
Kay
It makes more sense to me now that those Republicans who un-endorsed Trump turned around and re-endorsed him.
They’ve been waiting for the Comey October Surprise, and he delivered.
I hope like hell they all lose, the whole pack of them- so, so sick of the self-interested hackishness and reckless, crazed pursuit of power. They’re so far from serving the “public interest” they couldn’t find their way back with a flashlight and a map.
David Fud
@Kay: Unfortunately it is the howler monkeys they are afraid of, not the two-bit real estate developer.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Hey Adam, I appreciate the update but I am having trouble following what you wrote. Is it just me, perhaps so angry about this whole thing that I can’t think straight? Or might it have been written in haste and could use a little clarifying for those of us who didn’t follow the whole McAuliffe thing in detail? Apologies in advance if I am being dense.
Steeplejack (phone)
@D58826:
That 650K number struck me, too, as odd, if not improbable.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
To the public it looks like another DC circle jerk where people with huge egos are clawing and scratching for power.
I laugh at all this “concern” we’ve heard about whether Clinton revealed anything in those emails. WTF does it matter? The FBI leaks like crazy and they do it deliberately for score-settling or partisan gain or some petty shit. Unauthorized servers seem to be the least of the “security” concerns. They just leaked the juicy and damning parts of this investigation to the WSJ. The whole “security” handwringing is a joke.
Taylor
@hueyplong:
You evil bastard.
I like how you think.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
I get upwards of 50-100 per day now as well. Most are political asking for money. The vast majority I delete immediately because I consider them spam or I’m not answering the 5000th political email asking for money. IOW on my computer and according to gmail, all of those have actually been deleted.
So I have to ask, is Tony not only a pervert but he also has no idea how a delete button works?
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
The fact that the he has now bebunked his own allegation will have no bearing in the echo chamber, today on Meet The Press Larry Kudlow raised the McCabe conspiracy as part of the Clinton corruption, Chucky tried to interject that it was debunked, but Kudlow just steamrolled over him saying that where there is smoke there is smoke. Getting this nonsense out means it is now part of the Clinton corruption lore forever.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Ruckus: Maybe IMAP vs. POP
Steeplejack (phone)
To the little birdies who bring the news tidbits:
How about a warning on PDF links? This is like the third time my phone has inadvertently downloaded the letter. I don’t need to marvel at Harry Reid’s letterhead and typography. I just want to know what he wrote.
ETA: Get off my lawn, if that wasn’t already clear.
Judge Crater
The fact that the FBI just got a search warrant for the emails on Weiner’s computer is shocking. And they knew stuff was on the computer weeks ago? Comey is fucked. There is supposedly a pressing legal need to inform Congress of these “new” emails, but they haven’t gotten a search warrant?
And a Pulitzer Prize awaits the journalist who finds a “deep throat” in the FBI to document Trump’s ties to the Ruskies.
Kay
@Peale:
This has been amazing to watch. “A foreign government may be stealing emails from a US campaign”
The response is “oooh! Maybe we’ll find some dirt!” or “is it having any effect on the campaign’s poll numbers?”
I could take it if all of these people weren’t at the same time telling me Clinton’s server was a grave national security risk. Here’s a national security risk- a foreign government and the FBI are interfering in an election.
Hillary Clinton’s server seems really to be the least of my concerns.
amygdala
Man, the last paragraph of NFLTG Harry’s letter is a sick, sick burn. Good on Hillary to respond quickly, as she did, with a request to put or shut up. I wonder if she and her crew knew FBI didn’t have a warrant to look at the emails.
But yeah, these are the people keeping us safe? Oy.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Oldgold: I thought it was odd that right-wingers were criticizing Comey over this, since they’re usually fine with any ethical or legal breaches that can help them. I wondered if that meant there are investigations into Trump’s Russia ties that they’d love to keep quiet.
@efgoldman: I couldn’t see how they’d think the emails might have anything to do with Hillary if they’re investigating something completely unrelated. I thought that under those circumstances, they wouldn’t see enough of them to form an opinion one way or another. But having been lowly law firm support staff and not an actual lawyer, I figured there was just something I missed. I have to stop giving these people too much credit.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: That won’t be the issue. The reporting began to shift quickly on Friday night to Comey as the focus of this. By yesterday that included Chaffetz. As in was Chaffetz tipped off by a source within the FBI? If so did he pressure Comey to issue the letter? He can refuse to ask those questions, but I’ve seen a number of folks – online and off – raise those questions today. It may not have any effect on his reelection campaign. Where it may have an impact is if an investigation is opened into Comey violating the Privacy Act of 1974, the Hatch Act, and/or both. If he pressured a political appointee in the Executive Branch to do something that violated the Hatch Act he’s in a lot of trouble.
Kay
Maybe a couple of these brave patriots could have leaked that to the WSJ at the time of Comey’s outrageous press conference.
Little late now.
I look forward to the FBI selectively leaking damning and incomplete facts from their top secret investigation for the next 9 days. Since no one seems to be in charge there’s not much chance of any accountability.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Kay: Asked on another thread, is there an Internal Affairs division in the F(R)BI ?
redshirt
Maybe Comey can give a serious speech on how Trump’s ties to the Russians are potentially troubling and need to be investigated further.
Kay
@Adam L Silverman:
The repulsive Halperin is pushing the WSJ piece.
These people deserve Donald Trump as President. They’ll be thrilled. They can follow him around for 4 years and report on his zany antics and extreme manliness. CNN’s ratings will go thru the roof.
Kay
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Does it matter? The whole point of the prohibition on blabbing right before an election is because it can’t be undone. That’s the reason. It doesn’t matter why he did it or whether he gets fired or sanctioned afterwards. There’s no remedy. There’s no do-over.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: So on the 24th of October Devlin Barrett, the WSJ reporter that John linked to an excerpted from, wrote an article that I linked to that alleged that the Deputy Director of the FBI overseeing the investigatory team of agents, lawyers, and analysts into the Clinton email probe, was compromised. He was compromised because the Clinton raised money for McAuliffe’s PAC, which was used to fund large numbers of Democrats running for state office in VA. One of those candidates is Deputy Director of McCabe’s wife. At the time this was all happening Deputy Director McCabe was not a deputy director at the FBI yet, though he was a supervisory special agent (he got an internal promotion to a more senior position sometime in early 2016) nor was he involved with the Clinton email probe. Regardless of the fact that the timelines didn’t line up – donation, state level election/campaign, and McCabe’s promotion – Barrett’s reporting was spun that there must have been some quid pro quo and corruption that clearly must have led to the FBI not recommending prosecution to the career prosecutors at the DOJ. Of course that was all garbage. And as we can see in the excerpt above Deputy Director McCabe made the hard call when he had to. He was briefed by the investigative team looking into Weiner ‘s sexting with an underage teen that they seem to have found a cache of emails from Huma Abedin on Weiner’s laptop. He then made the decision that they should notify the investigative team that had been looking into the Clinton emails, brief Director Comey, and seek guidance as to whether to go forward, get a warrant, and see if there was anything of investigatory value here or not. Had Deputy Director McCabe been bought off by the campaign contribution to his wife’s losing effort to get elected to the Virginia legislature as Barrett’s article insinuated and had been pushed forward by GOP and Trump partisans, then he wouldn’t have made that call. So Barrett’s reporting today exonerates McCabe from the charges that Barrett insinuated six days or so ago. It also raises a serious question that needs to be answered: who is Barrett’s source on this? It is clear that that source is using Barrett for partisan purposes, so before anything else that Barrett reports on this can be taken seriously, some clarity needs to be provided on Barrett’s source/sources.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Kay: Understood, but it might matter in a clean up effort later.
Adam L Silverman
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Yes. There is also an Inspector General at the DOJ.
https://oig.justice.gov/
Bonnie
@Kay: But, the rest of don’t deserve Trump as President.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks.
Kay
I’m also sick of pieces like this:
We all know that Republicans intended to launch investigations of Hillary Clinton the moment she took office no matter what Comey did or didn’t disclose. We know that because they bragged about it. This compulsion to pretend that Republicans in Congress are acting in good faith with these investigations is ridiculous.
No one believes that.
Chris
@Baud:
This!!!
Ruckus
@Kay:
Hard to have ratings when most people are living under bridges, cooking sparrows on curtain rods. When they can afford fire. Of course I’m predicting that if tRump wins, it will take between 3-6 months, so April-July 2017 for the country to be in a full blown depression. Now I may be off on the timing but I’m pretty confident on the outcome. Also pretty sure it won’t end well because he’s too fucking stupid to figure out how to have any chance greater than zero at mitigating the damage.
Chris
@Msb:
Went all-out on surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of MLK’s civil rights movement which it argued was a great threat to America; at the same time, refused for decades to investigate the Mafia to the point of stating publicly that there was no such thing as the Mafia; similarly ignored the KKK for a while and required presidential kicks in the ass to finally get involved there.
Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity, indeed.
debbie
@Kay:
Kay, they may, but I don’t.
Kay
@Bonnie:
I’ve been spending some time with Trump’s craziest followers. You would not believe what these people are planning for this country. First there will be a series of show trials, where all their political enemies will be imprisoned. It isn’t just Democrats either. They hate establishment Republicans as much or more than Democrats.
They believe this. They believe Donald Trump will be rounding up people and arresting them. That’s what they think he means by “drain the swamp”. This isn’t normal political rhetoric. They’re all fucking nuts.
Chris
@Bill E Pilgrim:
If nothing else, I think future Democratic presidents will take the lesson to heart after this. They’ve been burnt by Republicans they appointed before, but I don’t know if it’s ever been this blatant.
ThresherK
@WaterGirl: TinyKittensTinyKittensTinyKittens EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I swear the only thing that’s kept us from applying to add some TinyKittens (to our current rescued cats) is the fact that we’re on opposite coasts from them.
My current favorite is Wren, the calico/tortie runt of Starling’s litter.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I think I was partially confused because I was conflating the article Cole linked to with the (I thought) WSJ article from earlier to day that exposed all the infighting within the FBI.
Another part of the problem is that I can’t see either the article that Cole linked to OR the article you linked to. Both articles require either a login or a subscription. So I just saw the excerpts that you guys posted.
So the guy who wrote both articles was initially suggesting that the Clinton investigation had been compromised because of McCabe, so the FBI “no reasonable person would indict on the Clinton email stuff” could not be trusted – because McCable had links to Clinton and/or was beholden to her because of his wife – were false.
Fast forward to now, and it’s McCabe who pushed the link between the Weiner stuff and the Clinton emails. So could McCabe be pushing this to “prove” that the allegations – that the investigation was compromised because of McCabe’s family links to Clinton – were false? Possibly throw Clinton and a fair election under the bus to save his reputation?
Kay
In other news my middle son (the Ohio voter) got two follow-up calls w/in 15 minutes to see if he had sent his absentee ballot in, so good job Clinton volunteers! He sent it in. I mailed it or it would still be in his car :)
Just get millions of people to vote, because having met members of Donald Trump’s most loyal fan club here locally, it ain’t gonna be pretty if they win. Apparently they’ve been waiting their whole miserable lives to boss people around, and they’re convinced “Mr. Trump” will be akin to their own personal dictator.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: No, the initial attempt to make the “McCabe” connection were bogus. The timing of events was all wrong – when the campaign occurred, when he was internally promoted, when he began to oversee the Clinton emails, etc. My impression on this is that Deputy Director McCabe has been professional because there hasn’t been anything reported out that credibly challenges that.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Okay, good to know. The whole Clinton email thing – taken to this extent – still seems bogus to me since every fucking secretary of state has had their own email server. And a president!
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: I have actively disliked Hillary Clinton for years, but they have gone so overboard with the relentless investigations and bullshit that I now have a grudging respect for her. And I now wonder how much of the other stuff I believed about her for years was also based on bullshit and lies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think Paul Ryan will still be Speaker when it all shakes out, because the Chamber of Commerce and those sorts don’t want someone who’s gonna spook the Cokies and Todds, but I think that shaking is gonna be pretty humiliating. People are joking about Trump’s name being put in nomination, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if King and Geohmert and the like decide to humiliate Ryan that way just out of spite in at least an one round
hovercraft
@WaterGirl:
I posted this in one of the early threads today, it goes to your point about why people hate Hillary.
How Hillary Clinton Met Satan
The Lodger
@Adam L Silverman: And that’s what Obama can pardon Comey for… any violations of the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Hatch Act committed between [date unknown] and [date of announced pardon before the election]. That should make his name mud with almost everyone.
Elie
Just got back from doorbelling to make sure people we have as being Democrats have received and sent in their ballots (WA is a mail in state). Interesting experience. I am a black woman and I doorbelled in Bellingham in a neighborhood of poor/working class young white people. What a trip! Our national vision of poor and working class is just fully waking up to how many young white MEN are under-employed and in hard times. Everyone was polite, but more that a few were iffy about Dems at the top of the ticket. My job was not to engage in big teach in or debate, so if I got push back when I asked about voting for Dems, I just came back with how Dems progressives have historically supported working class needs, and left it at that. In general, the women were much more Dem positive and in general more enthusiastic. Interesting, huh? In general also, many folks had already sent in their ballots and they voted Dem. We’ll see but my seat of the pants assessment from not just today, but my other phone banking is that we will be ok at the top of the ticket here in WA. Just don’t know about downticket.
PS — we had a great rally with Patty Murray and Susan Delbene (Representative from Wa). Our volunteer room for today was packed with folks going out doorbelling — young, medium and olds like me…
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: Part of the problem, and the reporting has only facilitated this, is that there are four separate things going on here:
1) An (actually 9 of them) investigation into Benghazi that mestastisized into an investigation of Clinton’s emails because;
2) FOIA requests from a partisan, known anti-Clinton watchdog group Judicial Watch that forced State to produce the emails, which a) had not been properly archived and b) required a for FOIA classification review to determine if things that had been classified could now be unclassified and released subject to FOIA and that things that had been unclassified now needed to be classified and redacted so as not to be released subject to FOIA, which led to:
3) A specific set of House oversight investigations and the FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails in regard to a) failure to properly archive and b) questions/concerns pertaining to classification, where the DOJ/FBI wound up in an Interagency fight between State and the Intel Community over classification issues that resulted from the FOIA request driven classification reviews and;
4) A news media, especially the political reporters, who can’t ever seem to just explain what is going on as I have. Some of this, I’m sure, is the result of “the Clinton rules”, some of it is that most of the reporters, including the political reporters and commentators, just do not understand some and/or all of what I’ve delineated above, and some of it is that they, their editors, and their producers simply don’t cares because all of this, pitched in the most hyperbolic manner possible, draws eyeballs to advertising to generate revenue, which is the only real purpose behind most journalism in the US anymore.
WaterGirl
@hovercraft: Yeah, I tried to read that earlier today and wasn’t much into it. I didn’t have Clinton Derangement Syndrome but I was not a fan. I liked Bill but not Hillary, but i do think I was influenced by all the attacks over the years that I was predisposed to give her what I call the “negative benefit of the doubt”. There’s plenty not to like about Hillary, in my opinion, but when you start out negative it’s easier to hold on to the stuff you don’t like and it’s not as easy to see the stuff you would like. IF that makes any sense.
WaterGirl
@The Lodger: I don’t get why anyone thinks that pardoning Comey for this terrible breach of ethics AND for breaking the law. Makes no sense to me.
Ang
@Jeffro: A candidate with an aide whose husband was sexting.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, I had forgotten about some of that. I am in the “Hillary should have known it was a bad idea to keep her own server because of course they would nail her to the cross for it even if every other secretary of state before her did the same thing” camp. Even so, I started tuning out the email crap almost right after it started.
For me, it’s “yeah, that was a bad decision that showed poor judgment” thing. I doubt that there were serious issues with classified email, though. I imagine everybody screws that up now and again. Human error, not intent. That’s my take anyway.
I think for me my sense of fair play trumped my dislike of Hillary and got me to take a second look at her. I was always going to vote for her if she got the nomination, of course, but I didn’t have to like it. Now I am impressed by how she is standing up to the seriously never-ending bullshit, and she is literally still standing. She shared the stage with a stalker and still did a good job in the debate. I feel much better about her as a candidate and I am enraged by all the foul play.
Adam L Silverman
@Ang: Let’s once again blame the female spouse/partner/significant other for the flaws, failures, transgressions, and/or crimes of their husband/male partner/male significant other. That’s really classy.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: In all fairness to Ang, I believe s/he was correcting Jeffro who was making this point:
I think Ang’s point was to correct Jeffro and point out that it was even more removed from Hillary than just an aide – it was the aide’s spouse.
I didn’t get the feeling that Ang was trying to blame Huma – just that it was one more degree of separation from Hillary. I could be wrong, however. It has happened before!
edit: fixed a couple of grammar mistakes
Vhh
@encephalopath: Huma does not know how so many of her emails got on Weiner’s laptop. Maybe a rogue in the FBI does.
FormerSwingVoter
The amount of right-wing radicalization in our law enforcement officers is starting to become legitimately dangerous.
divF
@The Lodger: Another advantage to that is he no longer can hide behind the fifth amendment, and can be forced to testify as to who was leaking in the FBI.
ETA: aka “draining the swamp”
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
I never truly understood the Hillary hate. Nothing that conservatives has accused her of has been true. All the bullshit that both she and Bill have been accused of, other than his cheating has been bullshit. and she’s held her head up during all of it. That takes character. I’ve been in a very, very dim public light before, about one millionth of what she has and just keeping your sanity and temper can be difficult. She is exemplary, possibly better than our current president.
Having said that I worked for and voted for President Obama in 2008 and in 2012. But that was because I thought he was a better manager than her then. She has learned a lot these last 8 yrs and has grown as a human. That’s not something most of us do as we get into our 7th decade and it’s amazing. I trust her to do a good job, I trust her to work for people like she says she wants to. If I was of that age and it became necessary I’d work under her as commander in chief because I trust her to have learned that the things you don’t do are as or more important as the things you do.
Ruckus
@FormerSwingVoter:
STARTING?
You win the understatement award for the thread.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Sometimes the “Hillary is so awesome, everyone will lover her” comments make me want to scream, but I have to say I agreed with everything you wrote.
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: EF, you are channeling my anger this week. Thanks for that.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: The private server is sort of a mixed issue. Unlike the official State Department unclassified servers, the Clinton server was not hacked/breached (as far as the FBI’s forensic techs were able to determine). And it was not against policy at that time. However, given how both the GOP and the news media responds to anything Secretary Clinton does, even if she didn’t see it as an issue, one of her senior aides (either formal or informal) should have been looking out for her; especially if she was planning to run again as most surmised she would/might. Unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of senior staffs – uniformed and civilian – that don’t look at the world this way: that it is there responsibility to make sure the Boss’s blindspots do not come back and destroy the good work they and the staff are involved in doing.
The classification stuff is a bit squishier, but as almost everyone but the most hardcore partisans have indicated, given what was found to have been transmitted across an unclassified network at the time of original transmission, no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. At the time of original transmission they have determined that three emails were sent to Secretary Clinton (not sent by her, so she received them, not sent them) that contained material classified at the confidential level. These emails did not have any header and footer markings, which they should have had. Rather someone appears to have typed in, verbatim, three paragraphs of one or more sentences each of confidential information including the (C) for confidential designator at the front of each paragraph. There were, apparently, also emails from Secretary Clinton where she instructed senior aides to either themselves or to have other State personnel remove unclassified information from documents that were classified and transmit just the unclassified information. This is permitted provided proper protocols are followed – that’s why classified documents carry the header and footer designators and paragraph designators. Everything else that was deemed to be classified is material that was up classified as a result of the FOIA requests. It has been determined that as of 2016 this material should be classified regardless of it being deemed to be unclassified when it was originally sent. This happens all the time and is why these reviews are done prior to releasing documents under FOIA requests.
All of the above was covered in Congressman Cummings questioning of Director Comey on 7 July 2016:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4609850/rep-elijah-cummings-exonerates-hillary-republican-witch-hunt-blame-accused-classified-emails
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4616753/conclusion-house-oversight-andgovernment-reform-committee-clinton-e-mail-investigation
Trancript:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1607/07/cnr.05.html
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: If that is the case then I apologize to @Ang:
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Have you considered a series of comments regarding bunkers?
divF
@efgoldman:
FTFY.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, different because it’s Hillary Clinton. :: sigh ::
Emerald
@WaterGirl: I had a small dose of CDS originating in 1992 when I was a Tsongas fan. I never forgave Bill for beating Tsongas (rather like the Berniebots of today) and I lumped Hillary in with that.
It was the Benghaaaazzzi hearings that turned me. I wasn’t going to watch them. I figured I’d get a good sampling from MSNBC that night and I had a whole day in which to do some living.
When I got home from doing living, I turned on the teevee machine and saw what I thought was an extended clip from the hearing. But it went on an on, and finally I realized that this thing was live, still going on.
And there she sat all calm and smiling and in complete command, while the Republicans on the committee were breaking out in flop sweat.
If you want to cure your Hillary Hatred, I would recommend watching just one hour of those hearings. Any hour you choose, out of the eleven and a half wherein she conclusively demonstrated to the world that the Republicans are drooling fools, all the while remaining entirely pleasant and convivial.
And she did it all without notes.
Yeah, I want her to be President. Let those crawling little insects impeach her on Jan 21st. She can handle it. She will make them cry.
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: Ah, here’s where we apparently differ. I have been thinking my hostility quotient would be going sky high, but you’re not concerned about that, you’re going for it! I bow to you, sir!
P.S. Love the wisconsin lawyer comment!
SFAW
@efgoldman:
If I didn’t like you, I would use my sure-fire way to get Omnes all hostile ‘n’ shit. He’d be hostile toward me, not you, of course, but I didn’t think Major’s graphy thing differentiates re: the object of the hostility.
“Nice hostility quotient you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.”
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: @divF: Fuck you and fuck you too.
divF
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re welcome.
I’ll go back to making cheesecakes, now.
ETA: At least I didn’t get the profession wrong and call you a quack.
Full Metal Wingnut
@The Lodger: he doesn’t have to accept the pardon
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: All part of adding to the total, accumulated knowledge base of humankind!
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks for all this, Adam. I wish Cummings had gotten to Powell before his time ran out.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: I wish Cummings was running the committee. And you’re quite welcome.
Kay
Well, that’s that then. Republicans are opposed. Only Democratic candidates will be investigated by law enforcement from here on out.
JR in WV
I read an opinion piece by Sam Wang of Princeton Election Consortium in the NYT today. “Why Trump Stays Afloat” is the title, and it’s very interesting.
One of the most interesting items out of many facts Professor Wang mentions is this “In a Florida survey, 84 percent of Trump voters said that Mrs. Clinton should be in prison, and 40 percent said she was a demon.”
Now this is some Pure-D crazy nonsense, but I have no doubt that there are a ton of Republican Fundigelicals who believe it.
After all she is a WOMAN who doesn’t stay home and care for the 12 children she had for Jesus. She’s a WOMAN LAWYER!!! Running for President, when we all know the BIBLE tells us that “Ye shall not set a WOMAN ABOVE A MAN!”
I have heard this from people actually registered as Democrats who wouldn’t vote for even a Republican woman. It does say that, more or less, in the Old Testament, although I’m thinking that reflects the Priesthood, not the political leadership of a modern nation.
But I’m a Presbyterian/Unitarian/Universalist by upbringing, and a non-practising Pagan by proclivity, so even though I’ve read a lot about religion and been through the Bible twice (all of it I could find) I’m no authority on Fundagelical Christianity.
But believing the Democratic candidate for President is a Demon, that’s certifiable crazy lock ’em up for treatment to me.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: That’s not what that means. What that means is that Congress will not investigate. While DOJ will not confirm, it has been reported out that there is an ongoing CounterIntelligence investigation into Trump’s senior economic advisor, his ties to Russian oligarchs, and his activities vis a vis the Russian government last Spring. Similarly, while they will not confirm it, there has been reporting that Manafort is under investigation for his activities in Ukraine (and other places). Finally, the DDNI has implicitly confirmed, by remarking that Russia is behind the Podesta, DNC, DCCC, etc hacks that there is an ongoing investigation into the hacks from both the CounterIntelligence and FBI side of things.
JR in WV
@Kay:
Did you ever dream that Republicans would refuse to investigate a political candidate professing love for the dictator of Russia, when Russia’s security services are interfering in American elections?
Talk about Party above Country. We haven’t seen the like since Communist cells were being controlled by Stalin’s apparatus back in the 1930s and 1940s. Joe McCarthy times again. And these are Republicans – kowtowing to Russia, and keeping the facts OUR security apparatus knows secret before a critical election, lest people know the truth about a Republican candidate.
Fuqing amazing, it is.
Percysowner
@Betty Cracker: I use a email client on my computer that leaves the emails online, so I just went to my gmail account. online to see what kind of email usage I received. I last cleared all my online Inbox on Oct 27. Today I have 8,715 emails sitting in there. That doesn’t count what is sitting around in Trash, because I didn’t empty it. We get a lot more email than we think. News group notifications, spam, online discussion notifications, emails forwarded to us, and emails we send. If you don’t clean out your inbox every day and dump your trash take a look at how many emails you have just sitting around. You might be surprised.
WaterGirl
@Emerald: I don’t have Hillary hatred, read what I wrote again, please. :-)
edit:I used to not like her, now I voted for her happily enough.
Omnes Omnibus
@Emerald: @WaterGirl: I know that I am a dude and all, but I cannot understand how any woman who has worked in the professional world could have Hillary hatred (WG, I know you don’t have it, but I am including you for continuity’s sake). She seems to have been subject to just about every attack on professional women that is out there.
TheMightyTrowel
@Omnes Omnibus: Aside from some groping action, all the worst things that have been said to me professionally (including all the old standards about being aggressive, abrasive, bullying, demanding, etc etc etc) have been said to me by women. The patriarchy screws us all and, more importantly, just because you’ve experienced a thing doesn’t mean that you are immediately able to understand that that was a bad thing. To use a somewhat hyperbolic analogy: people who have suffered abuse often pass it down by enacting it on others once they are in the same position as their abuser. These cycles of misogyny are a common feature of many work places which is a truly enormous tragedy.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: @Emerald: I don’t really get it either. Maybe mean girls, all grown up? Or maybe they are sad little people who look at the world as a zero-sum game, where if you’re up, that means I’m down? I have known a few women who don’t particularly like other women, but I don’t think that’s as common as women gravitating toward other women.
I put myself through college by working as a checkout girl at the grocery store. Working there, I found that I really had to downgrade my assumptions about how smart the average person was. I feel the same way now… I am having to seriously downgrade my assumptions about people – there are way more overt racists and misogynists than I ever dreamed. And I say this as a professional woman who worked in a university where women were definitely not accorded the same respect as the males.
WaterGirl
@TheMightyTrowel: Interesting! And not my experience at all. I have worked for a few women who have been petty, but nothing like you describe. Not sure what field you are in; I was in IT when I worked for the university. Maybe that makes a difference?
Omnes Omnibus
@TheMightyTrowel: Makes no sense to me, but I won’t argue against you experience.
@WaterGirl: Maybe TMT has it.
TheMightyTrowel
@WaterGirl: I’m an archaeologist – work at a university currently in Australia, but previously in the UK where the same held true.
My peers and I, as relatively early career researchers (finished PhD w/i last 10 years) have discussed this at length and many of us have had senior women – the few who really fought to get to the top of our various fields – be among the worst supervisors/mentors on a scale from Actively sabotages attempts to progress in field to gives piss poor advice suggesting a more ladylike demeanour. We’re trying to develop better and more supportive networks for women through our own peer mentoring activities but it’s rough because so much of uni/research progression comes through patronage and there are limited women who can/want to/will act as patrons in that way. I know 2 in my field (one down here and one in the UK).
Some of this is down to history repeating (this was hard for me, it should be hard for you; this is how supervisors speak to junior women; etc), some to margaret thatcher syndrome (breaks glass ceiling, pulls ladder up after her – there can only be one), some probably to internalised misogyny and some to a misplaced sense of fair play (when I was a junior academic, i hated it when the boys used their network to get ahead of me, so i won’t act as a patron to junior academics because it was weaponised against me). These are speculative, but based on lots of conversations and lived experience.
WaterGirl
@TheMightyTrowel: Very interesting! As I think about it, none of the women (or men) I reported to knew how to do my job, so most of what you experienced wouldn’t apply to me. But what you’re saying makes sense.
Adam L Silverman
@TheMightyTrowel: @WaterGirl: Risking bordering on mansplaining here, but I think, what the Trowel is describing is part of a larger problem within academia: senior faculty, who have protections of seniority to include tenure (where applicable) are often threatened by junior faculty. I saw this consistently when I served on search committees as the grad student rep on the committee or as a post-doc or as a junior faculty member. I was always amazed that quite often the best candidates either didn’t make the cut for an interview or, if they did, didn’t get the offer and it was usually because the people with the established careers and the protection of tenure were afraid of highs speed, low drag potential junior colleagues. We see it in peer review for publications. Senior folks doing absolutely horrid work get it published anywhere they want. Junior folks doing absolutely ground breaking work can’t get through peer review because the senior people doing the peer review can’t tolerate having their work criticized, advanced in directions they never anticipated, or even just overturned by new discoveries. Its as if the whole point is not to advance knowledge, but to simply protect one’s own efforts.
I think what you’re describing fits into this larger dynamic, but it has a specific gender component to it, which makes it both worse and most unfortunate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: There was an SNL sketch back during the First or Second Gulf Wars, can’t remember which one, where the Pentagon spokesman stated very clearly that there were somethings he simply could not comment on because it would breach operational security and endanger lives. So the media twits kept asking the same questions that he previously didn’t answer, as if he might have forgotten all about OPSEC in the previous five seconds. The audience instantly go the joke even though very few of them, I’m sure, have undergone formal COMSEC or NRAS training, or have even seen an actual classified document or sat through a classified briefing.
As you are quite aware, there are certain procedural things that are more or less locked in concrete that you never waver from, yet the media twits seem incapable of comprehending this, because they’re sure some incredible scoop that will turn them into someone who Robert Redford plays in a movie will fall out of the mouth of a very well trained not to do exactly that DoD or DoJ or DoAnything spokesperson.
TheMightyTrowel
@Adam L Silverman: Yes exactly that but with a delightful gendered icing. Incidentally my Dphil almost got failed at Viva (oral exam) because my external examiner (senior woman) was deeply offended that some of my results contradicted some of hers. It took 11 months of her stonewalling before I could finally submit and she required me to insert 178 footnotes (yes, that’s the real number) undermining my own research and, in about 40% of cases, inserting untrue things (i.e. that bronze axes which have a higher tin content than normal and which seem to have been made that way intentionally and which are traditionally referred to as ‘tinned bronzes’ were in fact coated in metallic tin when SCIENCE and BASIC OBSERVATION tell us that they just had more tin ore added in during the smelting process and cold hammering is known to affect the surface colour). Clearly all of this got stripped out when I published the book and the first article I published from my completed doctorate was a discussion of the specific chapter she found so offensive and why my research demonstrates major flaws in theory building by “Some” archaeologists.
In academia, it pays to have a nemesis.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: No argument here.
Adam L Silverman
@TheMightyTrowel: I didn’t put it in there but I watched a friend fail his DPhil defense at St. Andrews for almost the same thing. He had, it turned out, taken his external examiner’s theory and expanded it into a direction, because the theory was decades old, that the external examiner didn’t appreciate. The guy (can’t remember if he was from Oxford or Cambridge) came into the room, ordered the guy defending out, and then without shutting the door to the conference room proceeded to inform the committee that he was failing his doctoral thesis, and because of the rules his decision was final and could not be overruled by the internal committee members. Me and several of the other students who were their to wish this poor guy well watched him basically disintegrate in front of our eyes. Eventually the internal faculty on the committee were able to talk this ass down and the resolution was that the theoretical review and expansion chapters/sections had to be rewritten to remove any and all criticisms of the external examiner’s theory (which was largely that it was no longer applicable without updating as it was 30 plus years old), as well as revising all the extensions/adaptations to it that the external examiner didn’t agree with.
Don’t even get me started on what I’ve seen tenure and promotion committees and hiring committees do! And with that I’m to bed.