OH! Then you should call Comey and explain to him that he misinterpreted your straight reading of the law! I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear from you! I’m sure he’s been hoping that someone would come along and explain the law to him. If only he’d known to ask you first, he would totally been able to charge Hillary last summer.
CarnalK is correct.
To be excruciatingly technical, gross negligence is a form of intent. It’s just lower than the intent standard they employ as a matter of prosecutorial discretion (but that is not required of them under the law).
The key paragraphs from Comey:
How utterly bizarre. I was quoting HIS explanation of the law.
CarnalK said that Hillary broke a law that doesn’t require intent. While gross negligence might be a form of intent, I’m not seeing how that’s relevant.
If Hillary broke a law that doesn’t require intent, it shouldn’t make a difference if negligence is intent or not.
Also - wouldn’t Hillary have to be convicted of gross negligence for that to apply? It’s not just a matter of teh Prosecutor’s (or in this case, Director Comey’s) personal opinion.
Maybe Comey was being sarcastic? Republican humor can often be difficult to detect.
You’re just a little confused.
The standard of intent required by the statute is gross negligence. A prosecutor would have to prove that the person was not only less careful than a reasonable person, but was nearly reckless. But, for a variety of reasons, the DOJ has never enforced the law against people who were merely grossly negligent, and has instead required a higher standard of intent. Part of what is confusing here is that sometimes “intent” means “the required level of criminal mens rea” and sometimes it means “purposeful action.” When Comey says she didn’t action with intent, he means the latter.
With this in mind, two propositions can both be true: (1) Hillary violated the statute by being grossly negligent with respect to the classified information; and (2) Comey chose not to bring a prosecution because she lacked the requisite level of intent for him to do so.
I see. Thank you for your explanation.
I’m wondering about the deletion of 30,000 emails plus provable lies such as Clinton’s not knowing the significance of “C” for classified when she’d been shown to have used it that way herself. Why do these not constitute tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice and perjury? And if so why wete they ignored by the FBI in making its determination not to bring charges?
Intentionally deleting relevant emails and lying about the significance of “C” would indeed constitute the kind of conduct that would be relevant to bringing charges.
What you’re confused about isn’t the law or the relevance, but the basic facts. The things you assert to be “provable lies” aren’t, in fact, provable (or aren’t lies).
It’s almost as if these things haven’t been explained hundreds of times already.
-
The deleted emails were personal emails which she was not required to provide under FOIA. For example, I just deleted the email notifying me that there had been an update to this thread. Oh noes!
-
The (c) is required to be in the header of the email. For the emails she received, it was not in the header of the email, it was buried in the body of the email where it was easy to overlook or misinterpret.
Or, for the other guy: “Which president was known for paranoia, conspiracy theories, bigotry, and keeping an enemies list”
It seems like investigating related emails on other devices could be a never-ending investigation. Could the FBI get search warrants for other people who sent or received emails? For example, if on the Clinton server they see she emailed Colin Powell, could the FBI get warrants for Powell’s phones, laptops, etc. What’s the difference between getting a warrant for Weiner’s laptop used by Abedin and Powell’s? It should be obvious that they both are likely to have emails related to Clinton’s server.
Kinda lame, dude.
But again we don’t know that there is anything even remotely sensitive on there. It might be emails about the scheduling of political events, plane tickets, and Brownie recipes. Even if sensitive emails were copied over to an unsecured laptop, that would seem to be Abadin’s fault rather than Clinton’s.
Julian Sanchez has a great (long-ish) take on the emails that sums up what I’ve been arguing for a while now. Worth a read.
Agree or disagree, you’re likely to come away from that article more educated, even if you’ve followed this all pretty closely.
Several posts here and many different media commentaries have illustrated exactly how the same information could have been framed in a much less ominous fashion that would have been far less subject to misinterpretation by partisan interests.
I’ve said from the beginning that he was in a tight position, and was covering his ass. I’m happy to apply my favorite guideline of life here – “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” – which explains so much of the world. There’s no persuasive evidence that he was motivated by partisan interests, though he might have been – we just don’t know. What we do know is that if he wasn’t being partisan, then he was extraordinarily stupid and naive in how he did this, and the effect is the same. And given the gravity of the situation I’d say his motivations should be examined, and a clarification of his original blundered statement should be demanded not just by Hillary, but by the Justice Department.
Lord knows you’re right. No one could have predicted that the Magnificent Dick Texter would become the center of the presidential campaign in its waning days!
one of the more simple, straightforward responses to the Trump trolls of “how can you vote for a woman satan?”
nicely done.
I would certainly quibble with one point he makes early:
The Clintons chose the level of security for their server. They could have afforded a much higher level both in initial setup and ongoing monitoring. I think a reasonable person could understand the Secretary of State was obliged to have a much a higher level than they went with.
Yes, that was helpful. What are your thoughts on Comey being charged under the Hatch Act? I just can’t see it. I can see him resigning, but not being investigated-- to politically volatile with little upside.