McCabe’s leaks were damaging to Clinton.
So late in October 2016, the NY FBI office calls the Wall Street Journal and plants a couple of stories, first that there was an investigation in the Clinton Foundation (beyond Clinton’s emails) and second that McCabe has ties to the Clinton Foundation (already discussed, and tenuous as shit) and has ordered the investigation to be shut down. McCabe countered that with his own leak, covering himself but running afoul of bureau policy.
NY FBI is the branch that raided Trump’s lawyers office and I guess we can assume they’ll be in charge of the investigation. Or of making evidence disappear. Really, who knows.
How much has the FBI changed since the dark days of Reichsminister Hoover?
You guys see Usual Suspects? The black FBI guy, who dressed and goateed like somebody in the late 50’s going out to drink espresso and argue about jazz? Am I the only one who went “Whoa! Since when are there be-bop FBI agents!”? I am fairly assured that the FBI overall is less reactionary than I grimly recall, but how much?
Now, I quibble with wording: the “…NY FBI office calls the Wall Street Journal…” is a little too loose, Lautrec. I have often heard side talk about there being certain people in said office that are just to the right of Sam, the American Eagle, but the “office”? Got no problem believing that someone in that office leaked stuff, but probably on the QT and the downlow.
'Course, maybe you just dashed it off and that implication is my own interpretation, so anyway, here’s your chance. No insinuations, mind, but simply for clarity’s sake.
Respectfully noted, but I am not clear on where the difference is in that distinction.
I will say that the general rule of recusal should be that if anyone has any question, then recuse.
There’s really no reason that mcCabe should have cared whether he was or was not part of the Clinton investigation and the instant anyone had any question, he should have recused.
And the fact that he didn’t, it seems, threw both him and Comey into a vortex of poor decisions because it allowed the ingress of the worry of politics.
Personally, from what I have seen of Comey and McCabe, I think they fell prey to the Peter Principle. Nice guys, perhaps, but not fit for the positions they were tasked to fill.
Horowitz’s report was released to a number of people a week or two ago, and yet no one has leaked anything about it. Now, Trump is messaging that the report might be released in a “watered down” form:
I take these two items of evidence to mean that the report was not super thrilling and will likely be released as-is, once redactions are complete.
McCabe said he will not testify unless granted immunity from prosecution. Otherwise he will take the 5th when questioned. Sweet.
Report released:
Haven’t read it yet buy the synopses that I have read don’t seem terribly damning. From a technical standpoint, Comey should have been working with Lynch to decide what and when to announce to the public seems to be the main takeaway.
Comey’s argument back would seem to be that Lynch wasn’t trustworthy and it was his greater duty to protect the integrity of the investigation even it that went against the official procedure. But that, also, he probably did flub it with his public announcements.
From that standpoint I’m glad that’s done with. The whole Clinton email thing was pretty much a distraction anyway, and I don’t think it was ever likely that anything was going to come out of it.
The only potential Clinton-related impact item would be the supposedly-suppressed investigation of the Clinton Foundation. Did this report cover that angle?
Done? What makes you think this is done? Finding something to pin on Hillary Clinton is the Holy Grail of Republican politics.[sup]*[/sup] They will keep looking until they find it.
- Well, that and tax cuts.
Comey mentions the reasons in his book. Paraphrasing, he intentionally did not want the appearance that he was coordinating, or working, with Lynch. He knew it was outside the norm, but he thought she might be “compromised” (probably not the right word) and if he consulted with her, it would taint the FBI’s work. something like that…
Clinton Global Initiative
Not in any synopses of it that I have read and, I’ll admit, I wasn’t aware that there was in fact an investigation of the CGI. Apparently there is, but it wasn’t started until 2017 so I would doubt that it would be covered by this. This covered the email investigation and had the potential (I believe) to expand into questions of whether the FBI worked to prevent Trump from getting into office in any active way, if the evidence opened that door. On that front, the report basically says that (in private messages) five agents were found to have said negative things about Trump during the 2016 election, but that there was no evidence that anyone had done anything on that front.
And, it should be noted, that we know that at least one of those five agents was Strzok, and he was negative to Trump, Sanders, Clinton, and basically everyone else in elected office so even this statement of FBI “bias” is probably an overstatement.
I don’t agree with that. Bottom line was that whatever Strzok thought of Clinton, he expressed a very strong preference that she be elected.
This MB is full of people who have varying degrees of negative views of Clinton but would have done anything in their power to get her elected vs Trump.
This feels terribly cynical. Surely there are honorable people who will aptly and honorably perform their duties in spite of their personal qualms. You seem to be *assuming *that Strzok is, well, without honor–that because of his preferences he must have compromised his job duties.
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Do we require that they have no political opinions, or that they act as if they didn’t? And those “good FBI agents” that the “Hon.” Mr Nunes speaks of, how do we categorize them?
This is an incorrect assumption.
I was responding to a specific point made by Sage Rat. What I said was appropriate in the context of that specific point.
I made no assumptions. I made an observation about how your statement appeared to me.
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While many on this board might say that they’d do something, I would be relatively certain that nearly all of them - if working as FBI agents - would simply do their job faithfully. And all of the ones who would vote for Hillary while holding their nose, on the basis that however bad she was she was at least strongly preferable to Trump, would probably be among the majority who - as FBI agents - would simply do their job faithfully. All of the people who would do something to try and get Hillary elected would be the ones that strongly supported her.
And as it is:
A) Strzok was in a position to do something.
B) He didn’t.
Ergo, this line of reasoning is asked and answered.
That’s a completely separate argument from the one you made before and which I commented on. Your earlier argument was that Strzok disliked Clinton too so he couldn’t have been biased against Trump. That’s an illogical argument, as I’ve shown. Now you’re saying, yeah, well the evidence shows that he didn’t act on whatever bias he may have had. OK.
You misunderstood. My argument was that he is not a true believer. He hated politicians in general, and that includes Clinton, so while he may have strongly preferred her to Trump, it would be very strange for someone who hated both of them to go extraordinarily out of his way, and put himself at risk of criminal prosecution, to support a person who he’d probably be at least a bit happy to see fail.
If you’re biased against both people, the fact that you’re less biased by a ton against one of them is not evidence of criminality, nor even a great reason to suspect it.