FBI not recommending charges against Clinton

[wonky]

@davidm

No meaningful amount of voters will be swayed by the pronouncements of carelessness. The haters will crow about it, and her supporters will ignore it. Business as usual, in other words.

For me, the carelessness part was obvious from the start. This was a stupid lack of judgment. So I’m not ignoring it, I just already factored it in.

[Czarcasm]

@Ukulele_Ike

This is the sort of event that leads me to visit Breitbart.com solely to enjoy the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Their top headline: “The Fix Is In!”

[davidm]

Some of it may have been inexperience with new technology, not that that excuses it.

[Pleonast]

@Sam_Stone

If a Republican had done all this, the left would be spitting nails.

Which is ultimately why most people ignore this whole “scandal”. It’s too obvious a partisan talking point.

[GIGObuster]

@Sam_Stone

It’s a strange time we live in when the only thing that matters in a case like this is whether Hillary would be indicted or not.

Only strange by ignoring the day in and day out efforts of the right wing media and even sometimes the mainstream to tell their viewers or readers that Hillary should go to Prison for what she did. It does remind me a lot of the many times debunked Vince Foster conspiracy theory, the right will not let go even if the investigation found nothing to incriminate Clinton. And cuckoo Trump recently demonstrated that he will push that old chestnut in the presidential contest.

@Sam_Stone

If a Republican had done all this, the left would be spitting nails.

Possibly, but the left in power has demonstrated to not have the reckless appetite that the Republicans show to order investigations** that had predictable negative results**, but because it seems that the process gets good results in their political eyes, the Republicans will very likely continue to waste government money to make them or to tell their followers about the new conspiracies afoot to “protect” the Clintons.

[Ukulele_Ike]

Sam Stone: Condi Rice did it. Colin Powell did it. As far as I can remember, neither the Democratic leadership nor the mainstream media called for indictments and investigations.

[TriPolar]

@Czarcasm

In most other elections it never would have been brought up unless that other candidate’s last name was also “Clinton”.

I don’t think that’s the case. Do you think careless handling of classified information in violation of regulations would have been ignored if the subject was Obama, Romney, McCain, Bush, Kerry, Gore, Dole, etc.? This would have been brought up and exploited politically in the same manner and in those other elections would have been considered far more serious.

[Lightnin]

Hell, the Bush admin did it and worse, and we didn’t have an investigation anywhere near this long.

[Czarcasm]

@Ukulele_Ike

Sam Stone: Condi Rice did it. Colin Powell did it. As far as I can remember, neither the Democratic leadership nor the mainstream media called for indictments and investigations.

Which may be one of the reasons the FBI is recommending that this be dropped: If she is charged, part of her defense could involve a continuation of policies carried over from previous Republican administrations-a can of worms I don’t think they want to open.

[Richard_Parker]

@jsgoddess

I don’t think most neutral observers (and certainly most liberal observers) ever thought there would be an indictment. The facts, at least the ones that were revealed to the public, never supported it. The people still hoping were just hoping without any reason.

Agreed.

And I think the flipside of that sentiment is that this doesn’t cease to be a scandalous example of bad judgment just because it was not criminal.

But we live in extreme times. When your opponent is a neo-Nazi, terrible security practices seem quaint.

[Morgenstern]

@jsgoddess

I don’t think most neutral observers (and certainly most liberal observers) ever thought there would be an indictment. The facts, at least the ones that were revealed to the public, never supported it. The people still hoping were just hoping without any reason.

I cycle through MSNBC, CNN and Fox news just to see what’s out there. Fox is the only source that really believed this was a major issue headed for an indictment and jail time. The other 2 sort of mentioned it in passing. All in all, the timing was great on the part of the FBI in releasing this before the convention.

Anyone want to bet Bill O’Reilly has an aneurysm tonight trying to back pedal from months of predicting an indictment and a jail term?

[QuickSilver]

@Sam_Stone

It’s a strange time we live in when the only thing that matters in a case like this is whether Hillary would be indicted or not.

Not indicted does not equal innocent of all wrongdoing. Comey made it clear that Clinton used exceedingly bad judgement, and through her actions very likely exposed U.S. secrets to rival countries and perhaps even to enemies. She was warned about it, and did nothing.

The FBI could not touch on her possible motivations for doing this, but that’s an open political question that should be judged at the polls. The very likely reason is that she’s paranoid and didn’t want her own communication subject to FOIA requests without her ability to censor it first.

She may not be going to jail, but her behavior throughout this should make her unfit to be President.

The thing she’s got going for her is that Trump’s behavior on damned near everything makes him unfit to be president. So yay! America gets to pick between two unpopular people who are not fit to lead them. Go team.

But don’t think the Republicans are going to roll over on this. Yesterday, Huma Abadin admitted that some of Hillary’s schedules went into a ‘burn bag’ and were destroyed.

She showed extremely poor judgement and has been forced to admit as much. I’ve always thought that she must be the luckiest candidate in recent elections because her opponent actually makes her look good.

That said, this is not an indictment of her political experience or qualifications for POTUS. I think she can do the job from a bureaucratic point of view. She’s just not a leader or a visionary. Her’s will be one of the dullest, most stagnant presidencies on record, and republicans will do everything they can to make it so.

@Sam_Stone

Just part off a pattern of Nixonian-level paranoia, which she didn’t unfortunately extend to American’s actual enemies and rivals - just her own rivals in politics.

If a Republican had done all this, the left would be spitting nails.

Politics is partisan. Nothing new under the sun.

[iiandyiiii]

The “burn bag” criticism is a nothing criticism. I work in a classified DoD office, and there are “burn bags” (which is an informal phrase for a paper bag or bin where classified docs are placed with the intention of shredding or burning them later on) throughout the office, and it’s incredibly routine to place any document in them once done working on it.

It means absolutely nothing whatsoever if Hillary’s daily schedules were printed out, and then sometime later someone put them in a burn bag. This is an incredibly routine action, and if putting daily schedules in a burn bag is criminal, or even a rules violation, then it’s one that probably happens thousands of times per day in government offices around the country. People with lots of work to do will end up with incredible stacks of paper on their desks at the end of the day, and that paper has to be put somewhere. No one has the time to look at every single sheet every day, so since burn bags are “safe” for burning/shredding any docs, whether classified or not, then often the whole stack will go in there.

[Morgenstern]

Trump tweets…

*The system is rigged. General Petraeus got in trouble for far less. Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment.
FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem
*

Poor Donald. The system isn’t working the way he thinks it works. Obviously anything that disagrees with him is defective. #butthurtDonald

[davidm]

Think Progress has an interesting viewpoint on this.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/07/05/3795414/hillary-clinton-isnt-getting-indicted-heres/

Setting aside the bare language of the law, there’s also a very important practical reason why officials in Clinton’s position are not typically indicted. The security applied to classified email systems is simply absurd. For this reason, a former CIA general counsel told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, “’it’s common’ that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information.” “’It’s inevitable, because the classified systems are often cumbersome and lots of people have access to the classified e-mails or cables.’ People who need quick guidance about a sensitive matter often pick up the phone or send a message on an open system. They shouldn’t, but they do.”

Indicting Clinton would require the Justice Department to apply a legal standard that would endanger countless officials throughout the government, and that would make it impossible for many government offices to function effectively.

[GIGObuster]

@Richard_Parker

Agreed.

And I think the flipside of that sentiment is that this doesn’t cease to be a scandalous example of bad judgment just because it was not criminal.

But we live in extreme times. When your opponent is a neo-Nazi, terrible security practices seem quaint.

And then there is the point that I do not remember any right winger dealt with, The point to them was that this is a great example of a moot item going forward as it is really unlikely that Clinton will not be put under eagle eyes by the agencies that also were chastised by the lapses in security observed. Not likely that the same conditions will be there to allow even the future president to avoid the new rules.

Note: observation voided if Trump becomes president because he really does not give a shit about rules because even after he gets caught he will try to get away with avoiding rules by lying to all about being caught in the recent past. To him it is semantics if the past was just hours ago, he will continue to break the rules. :rolleyes:

[watchwolf49]

As a Hillary supporter I’m very grateful Bill finally gave Loretta permission to go ahead and have the FBI announce they won’t be indicting The Good Woman … this gives The Donald plenty of time before the Republican Convention to screw this up bad.

I’ll be in the kitchen baking cookies if anyone needs me …

[BigT]

@Sam_Stone

It’s a strange time we live in when the only thing that matters in a case like this is whether Hillary would be indicted or not.

No, it’s not. That’s all that would matter in any situation. It’s all that mattered with her husband, too. The fact that G.W. Bush didn’t do anything illegal is all that mattered with him.

You are vastly overreaching. Even if we assume everything you said, it would not establish that Clinton was not fit to be president. Keeping secrets is just what people expect. Hell, we get all bent out of shape when someone leaks those secrets.

Would I prefer a more transparent candidate? Sure. But I would also prefer a more transparent government. We don’t have that. We have fucking secret courts. Not just courts closed to the public or with redacted information.

We’ve got a system obsessed with secrecy. A Secretary of State who kept some secrets is not going to matter at all, and would not have in the past.

[BobLibDem]

Hey Trump, go suck an egg. Petreaus willingly shared classified information with his lover. Clinton was careless, Petreaus was treasonous.

[YogSothoth]

Another win for Hillary! November can’t come soon enough!