This is partly about "the political games" but also about the illogic and careless language used by the talking heads on TV. And I don't like either side of both issues!
First, the "the political games". The Facts: FBI Director Comey sent a letter to "Congress advising them that more emails were found that might involve their previous committee investigations, as he had promised to do if new information was discovered. No specific information was included, and he noted that the possibilility of misunderstanding.
The basis of concern is that Huma Abedin (wife of Anthony Weiner of sexting shame-fame) is an associate of Clinton and there MIGHT be some Clinton emails not yet discovered. She used a family laptop to send some emails to Clinton. The content has not been made public at this time is not known at this time. Nothing suggesting anything improper has been offerred.
The FBI, after reviewing all the emails on Clinton's server, has found nothing of concern and closed the investigation months ago. A very few emails with classified information were sent TO her without proper notifications. Her replies were lawful; if you don't know received information was classified, YOU are not at fault. The FBI said so.
OK. As far as I can think, if Huma sent Clinton any emails, they are on Clinton's email system and already examined by the FBI. This starts to look like the Kevin Bacon game. Can you connect anyone socially unacceptable to Clinton? LOL!
As far as I can tell now, the letter was addressed TO House Committee Chairman, all Republican of course. I will explain something about the details of Government letter-writing. There is "TO", there is "cc" (courtesy copy), and there is "bcc" (blind courtesy copy) just like on emails.
Only in Government letters, the cc and bcc is not on the original TO letter. The "TO" recipients do not know about the cc and bcc list unless they ask for a file copy of the letter. The cc list does not know about the "bcc" list unless they ask (and the originators admit to it).
So, unless things have changed (and they might have - I've been retired for10 years), the Republican Committee saw only that they had been sent the letter, the Democratic minority leaders saw they had been sent a copy of the letter to the Republican Chairmen, and only Comey and his staff know who got sent a bcc copy (bcc's are usually sent only to internal staff who need to know about such things for media questions and file-keeping.
Is that confusing enough? I spent 30 years in Government and got very used to those kinds of subtleties, LOL! It all makes sense to me! LOL!
Second, the talking heads discussions...
Everyone I heard on MSNBC and CNN got it all WRONG! Clinton mentioned the Comey letter send to the Republican Committee Chairmen. As usual, she was utterly technically correct. The letter was indeed addressed to the Republican Committee Chairmen. She said that with the same accuracy I would in discussing "TO, cc, and bcc". She understands that stuff and speaks of it accurately.
The TV talking heads did not! They said Clinton claimed the letter was sent "only" to the Republicans and casitigatd her for a deception.. The ccs were sent to the ranking Democratic Minority Leaders. But they received cc copies; they were not the original TO recipients.
Meanwhile, Clinton is saying that she would like any available information to be released ASAP, as there is noactual information in Director Comey's letter but there are suggestions. Trump, on the other hand is claiming the non-information in Comey's letter as some proof of guilt
As odd as that might seem in the real world, it matters in Government. Comey very DELIBERATELY and EXPLICITLY sent the official copies of the letter to the Republican Committee chairmen and NOT the official copies to the Democratic Ranking Members. But cc'd them to cover his ass. A true Washington wimpy asshole who needs to be removed...
Conclusion: Comey wished to try to stay out of trouble by playing it both too carefully and too ineptly. Whoever wins the Presidency, he is going to be gone for the crime of political incompetence. He can't claim it was urgent (the FBI had the information 5 weeks ago), and he can't claim any factul reason for presenting the mere statement that the FBI was investigating new information 11 days before an election.
Ex FBI officials have said there is an informal, but previously modern unbroken rule of avoiding all political statements 60 days before an election. That Comey broke that rule says a lot about his intent.
3 comments:
Very interesting. Thank you for the insider's look at things. Love the "As odd as that might seem in the real world, it matters in Government" sentence!
Megan
Sydney, Australia
M here instead of Mario: I agree with Megan - very very interesting. It's nice to view this from an insider's perspective. What a mess, and the average citizen doesn't know who to believe or who to trust anymore.
This is the link to the FBI's director's statement: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system
From his statement:
From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
You said : A very few emails with classified information were sent TO her without proper notifications.
The Top Secret email chains alone should set off alarm bells whether you support or don't support HRC as a candidate. If you had sent or received classified email on your own private server while working in the Government do you think the FBI would have been as lenient to you?
Also from the director's statement: Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation
You felt : The FBI, after reviewing all the emails on Clinton's server, has found nothing of concern and closed the investigation months ago.
It doesn't appear that there was nothing of concern, but yes the investigation was closed in July.
One other note on classification from the Director: But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
For a woman as highly educated and well prepared for the office of POTUS one would think that she would know what is or isn't classified.
Finally he said: Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information...
and then added: our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case
It's up to one's mindset on how to judge the statement.
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