So what crime should Republicans charge her with? She didn’t make those previous statements under any kind of oath, they were just public statements. For a politician, lying to the public is practically a job requirement. Would there be anyone left in Congress if we applied that standard to everyone? It certainly is not prosecuted by the FBI as a criminal offense for anyone else.
And don’t mistake me as any great supporter of Hillary’s. (In fact, normally I’d be voting Republican if they weren’t working overtime making fools of themselves). The bottom line for me is that Comey’s statement is the simple truth - despite all the things she did wrong, the evidence does not support a conclusion that this was a criminal act. The Republicans got their investigation, now they need to shut up and abide by the conclusions of the investigation.
I think you’ve gotten used to thinking that politicians have often used Donald Trump’s strategy of denouncing everyone as being stupid, biased, or ugly. In reality, only Donald Trump does that.
No, it’s not the smart play. That’s the thing: what Comey did was completely inappropriate - lending his office for the character assassination of an opposite-party presumptive Presidential nominee who violated no laws - but the Democrats effectively can’t criticize him for it in the larger context. It actually makes me agree with the title of this thread, though for completely different reasons than outlined in the OP.
I’m not sure your point. The FBI is non-partisan, but Comey is a Republican, and used his statement to bash Clinton even though they found Clinton had not violated those statutes.
Then why didn’t he recommend charges? The GOP was quite pissed that he didn’t keep to the party line that she was guilty of many varied and horrid felonies and even went so far as to imply that he had been bribed or otherwise influenced to favor the despicable Democrats.
First of all, I doubt he cares about the GOP wingnuts. He’s enough of an adult to go where the facts lead (no charges), but not quite enough to honor the non-partisan nature of his office an lay off the character assassination of a partisan foe.
I don’t believe he thinks of her as a foe. She did a very fucking stupid thing and she deserved the savaging she received Not only could national security have been jeopardized, she could have ruined her chances this election and turned over the country to the GOP. She’s lucky she’s up against Trump.
You can think that all you want, and there are parts I agree with. It’s not Comey’s place to say things like that when speaking as the head of the FBI.
Since when is that a crime that the Director of the FBI needs to recommend prosecution?
Congressman Jason Chaffetz asked Comey in his testimony if the FBI had looked into whether or not Hillary lied to Congress during her testimony to them, and he said that he did not, because nobody had asked him to. So Chaffetz said that he would put in the paperwork for an FBI investigation of whether she lied to Congress.
As a Democrat and someone who voted for HRC, I found Comey’s findings pretty fair. All he did was confirm what we already knew. She did screw up. She didn’t commit a crime. Her screw-ups have been long acknowledged and there was nothing new found. Time to move on.
It is impossible for Congress to pass a security clearance law that would supercede Article II of the Constitution. It would have to be a Constitutional Amendment. Even section 4 of Article II doesn’t allow for the trial of a person before they’re elected to the Presidency.
I wish they had. It is a terrible precedent for prosecutors to give this kind of “why I’m not charging you but you’re totally a bad person” press conferences.
Some people have indeed criticizedit, though I wouldn’t describe them as political operators, and more often than not they have been conservatives.