October 28, 2016

More information is coming about after the FBI's James Comey sent a poorly written letter to Congress, which says they are looking into emails that MAY be pertinent to the Clinton emails case.

I'm flabbergasted.

The NY Times reported that the new emails in question are not from Hillary Clinton, or her server that was investigated, but belonged to Huma Abedin, which relates to Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal.

Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.

NBC's Pete Williams has a tough time explaining how this new development even relates to Hillary Clinton in the above video except to say it may have something to do with email coming from Huma to Hillary and whether they contained classified information.

Williams was certain that this new information is going to take a long time to investigate and said, "You can just guarantee this is not gonna be done before the election. No way."

This whole investigation led by the FBI was about Hillary Clinton's handling of her emails on the personal server so why is this erupting onto the national stage?

When MSNBC's Steve Kornacki asked what the range of possibilities were, Williams admitted, "They are not from her, but who they were to and what they were about, I don't know."

Kornacki asked, "If it's not her server, if they are not from her, what is her potential in terms of looking at this investigation and what would her involvement be?

Williams replied, "That's just impossible to say until we know what the e-mails are?"

What a clusterfu*k!

Williams knows just enough from James Comey to throw this election -- especially Congressional races -- into a quagmire.

Sam Stein tweets:

John Podesta issued a strong statement:

"FBI Director Comey should immediately provide the American public more information than is contained in the letter he sent to eight Republican committee chairmen. Already, we have seen characterizations that the FBI is 'reopening' an investigation but Comey's words do not match that characterization. Director Comey's letter refers to emails that have come to light in an unrelated case, but we have no idea what those emails are and the Director himself notes they may not even be significant.

"It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.

"The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining. We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July."

Digby writes about the U.S. Attorney's dismissals:

There was a time when it was considered unacceptable for the authorities to talk about investigations or draw up charges against politicians in the day leading up to elections. That seems to have changed since this happened back in 2006:

The controversy surrounding the U.S. Attorneys dismissals was often linked to elections or voter-fraud issues. Allegations were that some of the U.S. Attorneys were dismissed for failing to instigate investigations damaging to Democratic politicians, or for failing to more aggressively pursue voter-fraud cases. Such allegations were made by some of the dismissed U.S. Attorneys themselves to suggest reasons they may have been dismissed. The background to the allegations is the recent tendency for elections in parts of the United States to be very close; an election outcome can be affected by an announced investigation of a politician. It is explicit policy of the Department of Justice to avoid bringing voter-related cases during an election for this reason. In September 2008, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice concluded that some of the dismissals were motivated by the refusal of some of the U.S. Attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases during the 2006 election cycle.

By April 2007, there was some speculation that the dismissal of the US attorneys might affect cases of public corruption and voter fraud. According to the National Law Journal,

"Just the appearance of political influence in cases related to those firings, combined with the recent, unusual reversal of a federal public corruption conviction in Wisconsin [c.f., Georgia Thompson], some say, will spur aggressive defense lawyers to question the political motivation of prosecutors in certain cases; make magistrates and judges more skeptical of the evidence before them; and perhaps even chill line prosecutors in their pursuit of some indictments."

But nobody cares about any of this stuff anymore. Anything goes. Wikileaks, FOIA, FBI all used for political purposes is just fine --- as long as the ox that's being gored is the ox you hate.

It's time for Comey to step up and explain himself fully.

UPDATE: You've got to be kidding me.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon