Well, the current headlines on Drudge are as follows:
FBI FOUND 650,000 EMAILS ON LAPTOP
DOJ BLOCKED FOUNDATION PROBE
Both link to this WSJ article.
I would think that with 650,000 emails to look at, thousands of which apparently have metadata indicating they could have come from or been sent to Clinton’s private server, this issue isn’t going to be ‘falling apart’ any time soon.
Benghazi! Email! Criminal!
BURN HER!
Jesus, I can’t wait for 8 years of investigations about this. It’s going to be so much more productive for congress, rather than actually producing legislation to run the country.
Not sure if this is worth anything, but this so-called bombshell isn’t trending anywhere.
I think people are pretty well burned-out by this and they don’t want - to paraphrase Bernie - to hear any more about Hillary’s damned emails.
As I noted previously, (possibly in a different thread …) the WSJ piece is contradicted by a Newsweek interview where they spoke with an official who said that the emails were not to or from Clinton or her stupid server. So I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that this time, Clinton’s pursuers have found the holy grail.
Similarly, the WSJ piece describes the DOJ decision to stop pursuing the Clinton Foundation as being a story of field agents desperately chasing the sunk cost fallacy. There is no unicorn underneath that mountain of horseshit. At some point, we have to stop paying people to roll down it.
And Drudge is a desperate hack who’s pinned his fading relevance on spreading conservative lies, so who actually gives a shit what his website headline reads.
How could an ‘official’ possibly know at this early stage that none of some 650,000 emails definitely did not come from or go to Clinton’s private server?
And even if he did, there’s still the question of whether any of the emails on Abedin’s computer contained classified information.
Newsweek is about as in the bag for Clinton as CNN. I wouldn’t take the word of either without independent confirmation.
Theoretically, one would look at the metadata for an email and see who the sender was and if the sender was someone with an email address located on Hillary’s stupid server. That part is stupidly simple.
My point was that the WSJ claims that the metadata suggests it came from the stupid Clinton server. Newsweek claims that it doesn’t. Time will tell who’s right, but there’s no reason to believe WSJ out of hand or to care what headline Drudge makes up about it.
Considering the heights of the bar for a prosecutable case, I find it much more likely than the FoxNews.Com version.
And my point is that given the FBI only obtained a warrant to look at the emails this weekend and that there are apparently some 650,000 emails to examine, there really isn’t any plausible way the so-called official referenced by Newsweek could possibly know what he was talking about. In other words I don’t believe he has any credibility at all, so to my mind there’s nothing of substance at this point to contradict what the WSJ article is reporting.
And again there’s still the question as to whether any of the emails on Abedin’s computer contained classified information.
(It’s possible also that at long last the FBI may finally learn some of what was on the 30,000 emails Hillary took it upon herself to delete.)
…So you’re accusing Newsweek and CNN of partisan bias, while citing the Wall Street Journal…
One thing in the right-wing sources’ favor is that agents have been more willing to leak inside info to them, so the right wing sources may actually have a better handle on the situation. The lefty crazies citing the Hatch Act wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if not for right wing sites reporting that there are disgruntled agents who want to get Clinton. Do those agents exist or not? If right-wing sources are not credible on the issue, then they don’t exist and there is zero grounds for an investigation into Hatch Act violations.
I’ll bet you realized that “oops, that means Comey is now caught red-handed in his dishonesty for suggesting that he knew the e-mails to be relevant last Friday” five minutes and one second after posting this, amirite?
I think this is the problem: he’s too cryptic. If Comey’s going to take the unusual step of releasing this sort of letter in a tight election race, I think he ought to also take the unusual step of characterizing them in a press conference. But that’s probably not going to happen.
The troublesome takeaway for me is that hyper-partisan politics has now wormed its way into our most important federal agencies. We’ve always known that civil servants aren’t immune from politics and political biases but it seems like there was the potential for full-on agency insurrection and this was Comey’s way of dealing with it. Not good.
Quite possible, but none of this would be necessary if someone hadn’t wanted to evade the FOIA and then run for President despite that skeleton in her closet.
Agreed.
Clinton is not blameless and her stubbornness is what has gotten her into trouble.
And put a LOT of high ranking people in very tough positions. Starting with her boss, who can’t criticize her in public, but for whom I bet he has something to say in his memoirs.
I think Comey was quite premature in his announcement and it was quite apparently a ham-fisted attempt to throw the election to Trump or, at the very least, help the Republicans retain the Senate. If I’m Barack Obama, the minute the last poll closes in Alaska I call Comey and tell him to pack up his shit and clear out of the office. If you think the president can’t fire the FBI director, I invite you to have a chat with William Sessions.
And that would be a disastrous move and would most likely cost Democrats the Senate and White House – possibly for years. I think you need to take your partisan blinders off.
I agree that there are questions about why Comey would do this but the most likely explanation is that he was trying to get ahead of leaks to the press and deal with morale issues within his agency. It’s also entirely possible that he felt like he was getting burned. He thought the investigation was over. He told Congress and the public as much. He dealt with scathing public criticism. He was willing to stand up to his own party and put his own reputation on the line to take on his republican critics on Capitol Hill. When he realized that there were yet more emails and realized that this investigation wasn’t over, he probably felt like he needed to protect his own reputation. Democrats can call him out for that I suppose but his behavior has a rational and reasonable explanation.
And let’s not forget. Comey wasn’t the one who ignored explicit departmental policies and advice in setting up Clinton’s email server. Comey didn’t set up Anthony Weiner just so he could access Huma Abedin’s emails. I mean FFS, Clinton should have known that Anthony Weiner (by way of Abedin) was a tremendous liability to her campaign. Clinton’s decisions are why we are here. None of that budges me from my position that she’s an infinitely better choice than her opponent, but attacking Comey is not only the wrong move but probably unwarranted.
We’ve become a hyper-partisan society and now apparently this phenomenon is finding its way into our bureaus and agencies. I suspect Comey (or whoever comes after him) will attempt to deal with that at the appropriate time – that time is not now.
Has to be for cause and maybe there could be cause, but if there is cause, fire his ass right now. Waiting until after the election just makes Obama look like a coward in his last Presidential act of any significance.
I’d also note that timing a firing for after an election to avoid electoral consequences is a violation of the hatch Act. yes, I know Presidents are exempt, but the spirit of such laws matters to voters. and since you started the rumor, there’s nothing wrong with Republicans campaigning on “Obama will fire Comey if you vote for Clinton.”
The cause is whatever the president thinks is fireable, just like impeachable is whatever the House says it is. I don’t buy any of the noble arguments for Comey’s attempted subversion of the democratic process. He put his thumb on the scale, get him out of there.
I don’t think Comey should be fired. There is no evidence that Comey did anything illegal. Harry Reid claiming the Hatch Act was violated doesn’t make it so. It just makes Harry Reid look like a blithering partisan idiot and given the electoral significance of his state I think he ought to be striking a different tone.
There’s a way out and that is to try to move past it, ask for greater transparency, and run out the election clock. But using naked partisan politics to impugn the integrity of a federal agency that largely enjoys the public trust is a really bad move, and it also exacerbates whatever partisan wars are already going on within the agency.